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Why has my cell signal degraded?

My cell signal, which was never very strong to begin with, has degraded to the point I can no longer reliably make calls from my home. We dropped our land line a few years ago in favor of cell phones, but now our cell calls are routinely dropped, which is extremely frustrating. My wife has an iPhone and I use an android. It's particularly aggravating when I'm calling my health insurance provider for instance and, after navigating the phone system, and I finally get to talk to a real person, the call is dropped. I'm worried that I may not be able to make emergency calls if, heaven forbid, I ever need to call 911. Ironically, my neighbors used to park in my driveway to make calls because my house is slightly higher than the surrounding terrain and they did not have any reception at their homes. Now we've lost signal strength as well.

We had a ray of hope when a new cell tower was installed less than a mile from us (lat 45 deg, 42', 58.68", lon -87 deg, 11', 40.07"), but was never activated. I've called customer service to complain, but was told although they know I live in a marginal service area, they had no knowledge of or control over new cell towers.

Can anyone tell me 1) why Verizon's signal has degraded, and 2) who to contact about activating new cell towers?

Thanks, all.

Comments

Ann154

Are you sure the cellular tower was a Verizon Wireless one?

YOOPER011

The tower was erected by SBA, which owns other towers in the area. It’s just the tower, no equipment attached. The landowner said she leased the property to be a Verizon tower, but it’s never been activated. Verizon is the only provider in the area.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Verizon_Support

YOOPER011,

We can relate to the need for reliability. Let's look into some more details. Kindly verify your zip code. How are data and text services?

KatiM_VZW

If my response answered your question please click the �Correct Answer� button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

TLHartmann

My hubs and I have been having the same problem... Poor signal strength not just at home, but in a lot of places for about 2-3 months now (both have a Moto Z Play Droid phone). We are in Longview, TX 75604. We are lucky to have 2-3 bars on a daily basis. Even have only one bar quite often. It not only has it made it difficult to use many of the apps because it caused them to load/react very slowly, some wouldn't open at all or would close because they would time out. It has also made it impossible to send or receive phone calls. During one week of going without the ability to make or get calls, I had uninstalled several apps that I thought may have in some way been interfering (because it had happened to me once before) but wasn't able to correct the problem. I did finally try turning on the Wi-Fi calling option (Settings > Advanced Calling > Wi-Fi Calling > toggled the On/Off switch to On) and low and behold I was able to make and receive phone calls.

The one thing that gets my goat is getting only 1 or 2 bars the majority of the time at home (in town), yet last weekend while fishing out at the lake (in the country) I was getting 4-5 bars.

When I called Verizon for technical support, I was told that I needed to call back from a different phone so they could run a diagnostic test on my phone. With the goal of customer satisfaction (which I can only guess is an actual goal of Verizon) in mind and in play, does it not seem like one reasonably easy thing to try would be to get all of the information possible from me concerning the problem (which prompted me to call them in the first place), do everything that can be done during that call, ensure that they have the best number to call me back at, end the call, run the diagnostic test(s) and any other tricks they have up their sleeves, then call me back with the results and a game plan to implement whatever steps to be taken to attempt to correct the problem?

Verizon_Support

TLHartmann, it’s super upsetting to hear that you’ve been having service issues in your area. You’ve done some great troubleshooting already, too. It’s great to hear that WIFI calling helped improve the service.

You make an excellent point, too, about what can and cannot be done to troubleshoot while on the phone you’re having issues with. Based on what you’ve experienced, though, we can rule out the phone as the cause of the issue, since you get phenomenal signal in other areas.

I’d like us to focus on the level of signal in your area. You said you and other Verizon customers are getting 1-2 bars consistently. When did that start? Do you ever see things change if, say, you use a certain app?

GeorgeS_VZW

If my response answered your question please click the “Correct Answer” button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

YOOPER011

Zip code: 49807. Data and text are marginally better, but I rely on a satellite service for data, not my phone.

EDWARD_PARKS

We have been having the same problem for the last couple of months. We live in a rural area where other carriers have poor service, however for years we had 3-4 bars on our Verizon cell phones and very good data speeds. About a year ago we dropped our unreliable DSL service and switched to Verizon's LTE Installed service for our home internet (a.k.a. "cantenna" mounted to the outside of our home). This was much more reliable and had download speeds around 10 MB and upload speeds of 8 MB.

However, around two months ago our LTE download speeds have dropped to 1.5 MB, both on the LTE Installed antenna, as well as on all of our cell phones. The cell phones have continued to get excellent data speeds when in town, but no longer at our home (inside or outside). Our phones and the LTE Installed antenna have also dropped from 3-4 bars to 1 bar. Our voice service is still fine on the phones (no dropped calls ever), and we have verified that we are not using enough data to be throttled.

I placed a service call with Verizon on August 15, 2017 regarding this degradation of service. They assigned a service ticket, and then closed it with statement "Our investigation has determined there is less than optimal signal strength in your reported area, which can cause weakened and reduced network connectivity, especially indoors. Though Verizon has the nation's best network, there are small pockets that experience these kinds of negative connections."

Apparently my house has moved from an area of optimal signal strength to one with poor signal coverage. More likely, it is a result of the much greater than anticipated number of people who have taken advantage of Verizon's new Unlimited plan, and are using far more data than before. The technician I spoke to on the phone verified that the cell tower closest to my house has recently been running at maximum data capacity, and suggested that it was most likely users who upgraded to Unlimited taking advantage.

If Verizon is going to offer Unlimited data, they need to upgrade their data capacity to handle it, so that people like me who don't use a lot of data don't experience degraded service.

JOHSUR0

I, too, have never had very good Verizon signal strength at my home in Matthews, NC, but for the past 12-15 months, the signal strength has been almost non-existent. The cell phone is unreliable, at best, and unusable a great deal of the time we are at home. I have excellent signal strength elsewhere. A new cell tower has just been built within a half-mile of our house - new tower coordinates are approximately 35-07-00.57N and 80-44-36.44W. I am told that so far, only T-Mobile has signed a lease for tower space. What can I do to push for Verizon to co-locate on this new tower, so that I can have a usable, acceptable cell signal at home? Is there someone I can contact directly about this?

1978BLACKCAT

My husband just went into Verizon store because we too have the same problem. We can text, use our data but when it came to making a call or receiving one, NOTHING. Rings then you pick up and you can't talk or hear anything. We called each other while in our living room and couldn't connect. Completely ridiculous. We bought brand new pixel phones in December 16' because our older phones were having issues with making and receiving calls in our house! It is like we were in some kind of call vortex, normally I don't mind but for work we both needed to be able to make and receive calls. Then a few months ago is started again, we even have the option for calling over wifi and that didn't work either, due to the network forcing the cellular provider even when you select wifi. Come to find out it is a Verizon Android update that they have yet to roll out to our area or our phones, not exactly sure how it is done. The only option is to wait until the update is pushed out to us or get new phones. Apparently the new phones have the update. What a bunch of BS!!!! Thankfully the plan we have let's us get new phones without cost, but seriously what joke!!!

Verizon_Support

1978bblackcat, I depend on my service to stay connected. What is your zip code? Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Is this issue only happening indoors?

AlbertoR_VZW

1978BLACKCAT

My zip code is 85296. I went into the Verizon store yesterday because what my husband was told by the Verizon rep, couldn't possibly have been correct. Upgrading to Oreo is not going to fix our issue. We only have issues with making/receiving calls specifically inside our house, nowhere else. I went in to see if there was an option to purchase a microcell and of course, they are all out of stock and on back order until October. I find it interesting for the carrier with the 'largest network', why are all their signal boosters out of stock and on back order???

I ended up calling a third party Verizon seller around us (Go Wireless) and the guy on the phone was SUPER helpful, more so then the guys at Verizon store. He gave me some tips on changing some settings on our phones to help with the poor reception in our house. We are going to see if that works. My husband works at a hospital and he is on call a lot. He was called in the other night and his phone would not receive the call. He could lose his job if he doesn't respond to a on call phone call.

veryfrustrated0118

There are tons of ways to fix the connectivity in your home.

First, don't rely on your mobile phone. There is no guarantee that you will receive a connection inside of any structure. There never has been and there never will be.

Second, if you are willing to get a network extender for $250 then you must have a cable broadband internet connection. In which case, you don't need the extender. You just go into your phones and enable WiFi calling and when you're home connected to the WiFi in your house you have service.

Third, get yourself a landline. This in a telephone whose connection is directly wired into your house. These land lines work when there is no electricity too. You don't even need a fancy telephone. You can plug one directly into the jack on the wall and you're set. That way, if your husband gets a call to go to the hospital, he won't miss it. Honestly, an on-call hospital employee should have one of these types of phones. It may prevent him from losing his job.

Verizon_Support

1978bblackcat,

I’m very sorry that the representatives in our corporate VZW store were not helpful. You deserve stellar customer service at all times. However, I’m happy to see that our partners at the Go Wireless store were able to assist you with adjusting the settings on the phone. We understand that having the signal that is needed is super important & are always here to help in every way possible. In looking into this area, there are plenty of towers in your area, so this is concerning that you’re dropping calls. Even within a coverage area shown, there are many factors, including but not limited to, usage, customer's equipment, terrain, proximity to buildings, foliage, and weather, that may impact service that are not within our control. I’m happy to read that the settings that were adjusted have been helping you with the dropped calls. Please do let us know if anything changes.

AliciaS_VZW

RODINSk

Well, I see there are no reasonable answers here either!

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