If only they could do the same thing for airports (e.g. LAX) where they don't explicitly block your signals, but they also don't allow any cell towers to be built in the area...
I'm convinced that LAPD has a few Stingrays set up at LAX - my phone shows full service but the connection is terrible and I always lose about 30% of my battery life between touch down and getting in a car.
Phone bars typically just measure signal strength. You can show full service but have a poor connection because there's a lot of noise or because the tower is overloaded.
most structures like that will have repeaters in the building for each vendor. they are common in many buildings which have site line issues to include basement level boosting
I've seen them tied to the side of existing buildings, and even masquerading as a tree :) Something I've noticed is that it seems the denser the population, the lower the towers are.
It's logical: the higher the antenna, the larger the area it has in its line of sight. If your base station is going to serve a large area, you want it as high as possible. If it's only for a small one, not so much.
