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These are spaced about every 300 meters next to the trail in Memorial Park in Houston, TX, but they aren't only along the trail. They are throughout the park. Does anyone have an idea what they might be? Thanks!
Snipex Alligators buried in the ground for fast access
These are small cell antennas, generally used for mmWave 5G due to the poor penetration the high frequency signals have or to increase capacity of a network where a lot of devices are used in a small space (places like stadiums, airports, city centers, etc) in which case they may have LTE antennas as well. They usually cover about a city blocks worth of area so you’ll see them spaced much like you describe.
The box on the ground is the actual radio and power supplies with the antennas behind the shroud on the pole. You’ll sometimes also see the radio cabinet mounted about 1.5m up the pole so it’s off the ground.
Source: a company I used to work for installed these (Crown Castle).
Thank you for the details! I appreciate you adding your knowledge.
Why does anyone need 5g in a park? A single slower service tower would be less expensive and less impactful to the environment, right?
Do they have any public events in the park? The park near the center of my town hosts farmers markets drawing hundreds of people, and various special events most weekends, drawing hundreds to thousands.
What's the busiest event in this park, and is there enough coverage during that? Here, it's the 4th of July fireworks, drawing maybe 10,000 people who start showing up at 5pm for a 10pm show.
Right? That's another reason why I was hoping this was something else. They're so awful looking, but I was going to be cool with them if it was a way to study animals or the environment somehow. Nope. Just more boring dystopian stuff.
Pretty sure that's a type of 5G cell tower. I don't know enough about them to tell you which one, but these have been going up a lot over the last couple years for short range high bandwidth cellular communications.
Maybe someone else can fill in the details.
Hopefully someone can! Reception was already quite good in the park and there are already a bunch of huge towers in the area, so I was hoping it was something more exotic. They are also just so menacing... You'd think they could disguise them better! Thanks for your response!
Pretty sure this is the answer, they seem to always look like that. Close to my street, they have them and it's the same cylinder but installed on the old light poles
5G is easily blocked by trees and buildings, so there needs to be many towers near each other
Depending on what kind of 5G you are talking about (yes there are many), towers also can work together to increase the total (not individual) bandwidth on the places that reach many of them.
Looks like an antenna of some sort. Is there Wi-Fi in the park?
Do we still have to put wifi antennas at that density? I'll be in the park later to check if this is the possible answer. I can't find any information about park wifi on the website. You're probably right; I guess I was just hoping for a more exotic answer. Thanks for the response!
Government mind control device.
Serious answer: mobile phone base / cell phone tower
Oh so corporate mind control then. Gotta serve those ads, bro, yes even in the park, how else can we make line go up bro we can't just expect line to go up without any ads bro we can't have people enjoying the park without ads bro PLEASE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDER! WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDER!
I get the sentiment but I imagined it was more about safety than advertising
There are already a bunch of those in the park, and they are huge. That makes me think they have to be something else. It's probably wifi? I just thought they wouldn't be at such a density if that were the case. Thanks for the response and the chuckle.
5G cellular is high bandwidth but very short range, so yeah they need that kind of density to maintain coverage. They installed them in a street near me and they're placed every couple of blocks. It's useful to think of the usual WiFi router at home: you can set up 2.4g and 5g access points. The 5g ones are faster, but have shorter range and you need to use the 2.4g one if you're far from the router
Gotcha. Thank you for the explanation. Not sure why we need such coverage in the park, but I'm sure it's great for someone!