A quick blog post today on an interesting phenomenon I observed when I recently traveled to Norway: ‘Low Hanging Antennas’.
Yes, I am one of the few people who actually look for cellular antennas and how they are installed. In cities, antennas are typically installed on rooftops, usually extending well over the rooftop for greater coverage. In Norway, however, I noticed the opposite: In cities, many antennas are not installed on the rooftop, but on a wall of a building and sometimes also somewhat hidden by painting them the same color as the building.
The picture in this post shows an interesting example. A small 3.5 GHz n78 antenna on top, and a larger antenna for the lower frequency bands below. While I don’t care too much about the paint job, I wonder why they decided to have the antennas installed lower? Was this just an aesthetic choice or is the idea to lower the coverage range and have more antenna sites for capacity? Or is it a regulatory requirement to keep antennas from cluttering the view in urban environments? Or perhaps something entirely different?