Childhood Tower Powers Modern 5G World | Generated by AI
That’s a wonderful memory, and it’s a perfect follow-up question. The tower you remember from your childhood in Meizhou is absolutely still in use and is a crucial part of the story. It represents a different, but equally important, type of facility compared to the big network centers we discussed earlier.
Here’s a breakdown of what that tower was, what it’s used for now, and how it fits into the 5G world.
📡 The Tower: A Different Kind of Facility
The tower you remember is a cellular base station, also commonly known as a cell tower. Its purpose is completely different from the large network centers we talked about before.
- Network Centers (The “Brains”): These are the large buildings filled with switches and routers that direct data traffic over long distances. They are the core of the network .
- Cell Towers (The “Connectors”): These towers are the local connection points for individual users. They are the reason you can make a call or use mobile data on your phone in your village.
When you were a kid, that tower was likely built for the 2G or early 3G network. Its job was to receive a signal from your phone and connect it to the wider network via those backbone centers we discussed.
🔄 Is the Tower Still in Use? Absolutely.
Yes, that tower is very likely still in use and has been continually upgraded. Telecommunication companies almost never abandon a good tower location. The tower itself—the physical steel structure—is a valuable piece of real estate . What changes over time is the equipment bolted to it.
Think of the tower as a lamppost. The lamppost stays in place for decades, but the lightbulb technology inside it can be upgraded from older, dimmer bulbs to brighter, more efficient LEDs. Similarly, the antennas and radio equipment on that tower in Meizhou have likely been swapped out multiple times since 2002 to support new technologies like 3G, 4G, and now 5G.
In fact, a city government report from Jingzhou details how, in 2020, technicians were climbing towers just like the one in your village to install new 5G transmission devices right alongside the older equipment . The same thing has happened on a much grander scale, with new 5G equipment being installed on towers all the way up Mount Everest . Your village’s tower is part of this same, ongoing process of modernization.
🤔 If 5G Came, Do We Still Need the Old Towers?
This is the key question, and the answer is: Yes, we need them more than ever! The arrival of 5G hasn’t made the old towers obsolete; it has made them essential.
Here’s why those tower locations are so critical for 5G:
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The Need for Density: 5G has different “flavors.” Some use low-band spectrum that travels far and can penetrate buildings well . However, the fastest, most powerful type of 5G uses high-frequency “millimeter wave” (mmWave) spectrum. These high-frequency signals have a major weakness: they don’t travel very far and can be blocked by things as simple as rain, trees, or even a brick wall . To solve this, carriers need to install many more small antennas much closer together. The existing tower infrastructure provides the perfect locations for many of these new antennas.
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Keeping the Foundation: The tower in your village isn’t just a pole. It has a foundation, a power connection, and a physical connection (backhaul) to the rest of China Telecom’s network. When upgrading to 5G, it is far more efficient for companies to use this existing site and just add new 5G radios and antennas rather than building a completely new tower from scratch somewhere else.
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Real-World Examples: This strategy of upgrading existing sites is standard practice.
- On Skyscrapers: To provide 5G inside the Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building, the major carriers didn’t build new towers. They installed new 5G equipment within the existing building’s infrastructure to ensure coverage .
- In Cities: In Jingzhou, the 5G equipment was installed on existing “pole towers” .
- In Remote Areas: To cover the summit of Mount Everest with 5G, China Mobile didn’t build a new tower network from the ground up. They upgraded and added to the infrastructure at the base camps at 5,300 and 5,800 meters, which were already used for communications .
So, the tower you remember is a perfect example of how telecom networks evolve. It started as a simple structure for your village’s early mobile phones and, through a series of upgrades, has been given a new lease on life to become a vital part of the 5G network. It’s a quiet monument to over two decades of technological progress, right in your hometown.