Our home is located between Interstate Route 95 and U.S. Route One and there seem to be cellphone towers everywhere. We had never had an issue with voice calls until earlier this year. Usually we just get 1 bar, calls fail to go through and are often dropped. I'm rather incredulous that we no longer can get good quality voice service when we can almost see the cellphone tower. I don't know if Verizon has redeployed or repositioned their equipment, but I suspect that may be the case. One cell transmitter I know of is positioned on the side of a large water tower and of course it is mounted on the side of the tower facing away from us.. I have no idea why they would install a directional antenna with 180 degrees of its capability blocked by a very large object.
After various conversations with Verizon Tech (had to use a landline as several calls to Tech were dropped), Verizon offered to send us a 4G LTE Network Extender. This device was installed relatively easily on our second floor next to our router. Comcast supplies our internet and we have, on average, 200Mbps download and 6Mbps upload.
Our phones registered correctly with the device, confirmed with #48 and our phones were all showing 4 bars, so I thought we were all set. Unfortunately, we are finding that any call we take or place exhibits a 5 second delay after the connection is made before the other party can correctly hear us. In other words there is a 5 second latency before call quality can be counted on.
Obviously this doesn't pass muster when placing or taking a call as the other party will quickly hang up when not hearing anything for 5 seconds.