How can I find who uses a cell tower?

[nnickn]

I realize this was asked before, but a clear answer wasn't provided. The closest tower to my house, which is a city water tower, is listed on antennasearch.com as only being used by clearwire. As a test, I walked as close as possible to the transmitters, a sign even read that I was in a harmful exposure zone, and got a dbm of about -55 with my Sprint 3G only device. It seems like sprint also has their antennas set up, meaning the cell tower look up pages I found on the internet are wrong. Is there any site that isn't wrong that anyone here would know of?
Also, a bonus question if you will, is why was clearwire only allocated frequencies of 17 and 18Ghz at the tower in question? I assume those are back haul routs, but what is done with the data after arriving at the tower? How is Clearwire sending data over 2.5Ghz to their customers, if they are not licensed for that at the tower?

 

[james515]

clearwire might own the tower, but could least it out to other carriers. Its been a common practice for awhile now that companies like clearwire, american tower and others are the ones who actually own the cell tower and such. but the wireless carriers still own their own antenna, radios in the shelter below the tower.

Im guessing what you found was the microwave frequencies, these are just the back haul and not what would be pushed out to a mobile phone. These frequencies might not even be for communications at that tower for mobile services.
But it could be. if an 18ghz microwave is being used at this location, that is to get the carrier facilities there and not using burried copper or fiber. the microwave radios then split this across the mobile radios at the the lower frequencies so you can make your call.


none of those tower sites are very accurate. I checked the at&t antenna site and several of the towers i know for a fact belong to at&t do not even show up on their site.