"Today, I got in my car and drove around my neighborhood. There is a 3G antenna about half a mile from my house. I noticed, in driving towards the antenna, driving away from the antenna, and around my neighborhood and surrounding streets that signal strength (the number of bars displayed on the phone) can vary significantly depending on surrounding houses, buildings, telephone poles, UPS trucks parked on the side of the road, and just about anything that contains metal. In some spots, I noticed the signal drop from 5 bars down to 2 bars just by moving 20 feet. I noticed that when my car was driving toward the 3G antenna (only the windshield of my car between phone and cell tower) the signal was usually 4 or 5 bars, yet when I was driving away from the 3G antenna the signal was usually about 2 bars. I live on a hilly area, and I noticed 5 bars in all of the high spots and 2 bars in most of the low spots. In some locations, when I would have thought the signal to be one bar, it was mysteriously 5 bars, and in other locations when I expected 5 bars, it was only 3 or 2 bars. In conclusion, the number of bars on your phone can vary significantly based on many different factors of your surroundings; so don't whine too much that you only have 2 bars at your house when your buddy 20 miles away has 5 bars - maybe it's because of the immediate surroundings of your houses that is creating the difference, and not the cell tower. In my own experience, I have noticed no obvious difference in speed between 2 bars or 5 bars. Maybe a quantified internet speed test will show a difference; but to the human brain, the speed seems the same between 2 bars and 5 bars of 3G ... at least for my brain.
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https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=6119130&posted=1#post6119130
