Bouygues Telecom – 5G antennas.
There are different tools to check if 5G antennas are activated near your home. Short instruction manual.
Operators have been scrambling to roll out their 5G mobile network in France since late last year. But we will have to wait many months before reaching national level coverage. There are different ways to check if you are concerned before falling for an adequate mobile plan.
Operator cards
You can start by looking at your operator’s mobile coverage map that already existed and was supplemented with 5G. They all include a search engine where you can type your address and distinguish, in accordance with Arcep’s wishes, the areas covered in the 3.5 GHz core band or in a band formerly allocated to 4G such as 700 Mhz for Free or most often 2.1 GHz for others. This is important, since the gains in speed compared to 4G will only be really noticeable with the 3.5 GHz band.
Unfortunately the data of these maps remains a little vague and does not indicate where the antennas are located. That of SFR * is, moreover, quite tedious to use. The Orange card is the most accurate. The incumbent operator declines like the other two colors to signify the 5G coverage areas but with the addition of a small sign with the different technologies and uses available with precision at the scale of the district.
The My Arcep mobile network card
The cartographic tool of the telecoms policeman also already existed and only integrated 5G this month of January. Its big advantage is to precisely locate the sites of the operators by indicating the frequency band. If we are very far from a 3.5 GHz antenna which will have little range, we can therefore suspect that we will receive 5G poorly. It also allows you to search for all operators, rather than going to the map of each of them.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to display the sites of the four operators simultaneously. You have to go from one to the other. It should also be noted that this map will only be updated once a month, when Arcep’s 5G Observatory is updated.
ANFR’s Cartoradio mapping tool
Like the other cards, Cartoradio is not at its first attempt. It has taken 5G sites into account since December. She is the only one to display them all at the same time. It therefore makes it possible to compare the coverage of operators.
But it does not indicate if the antennas are activated. The latter appear as soon as they have obtained an authorization to transmit. Useful, however, if you want to know if you will soon be eligible for 5G. Like my Mobile network, the Cartoradio tool is updated once a month.
* 01net.com is published by a subsidiary of NextRadioTV, itself owned by SFR Médias