Q: What coverage can I expect on Band 1 (10 MHz) and Band 3 (20 MHz) with a 20W BTS?
A: A reliable coverage figure requires a proper link-budget and propagation study (terrain/clutter, antenna height/tilt/gain, UE mix, noise figure, etc.). Without that, any single number will be misleading.
- Uplink is usually the limiter with phones. Handheld UEs are typically Power Class 3 with a max transmit power around 23 dBm (about 200 mW) in LTE/NR, so raising BTS power mostly improves downlink/capacity at the edge rather than extending range, unless you use higher-power CPEs.
- Frequency matters. Band 3 (1800 MHz) propagates slightly better than Band 1 (2100 MHz) because free-space path loss grows with frequency, all else equal. Expect a modest range advantage on B3.
- Bandwidth and noise matter. Receiver noise power scales with bandwidth (kTB), so narrower channels improve link budget at the cost of throughput.
With those caveats, very rough outdoors ballparks for a 20 W BTS per carrier (panel antennas at reasonable height) are:
- Dense urban: a few hundred meters of “guaranteed” handheld coverage (uplink-limited).
- Suburban/open: about 0.5–2 km.
- Good line-of-sight with elevated antennas or fixed CPEs: several km are achievable; real-world ORS tests have shown ranges from hundreds of meters in villages up to multiple km in open LOS, depending on band and setup.
Why “more BTS power does not equal more range” with phones and what actually drives range in practice: see our FAQs