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Service issues now where it has been good for years. What’s going on?

My service is awful now where it once was great for years. I’m talking at home in a rural area, at my boyfriend’s house in what used to be a 5g area and at work. If I don’t have WiFi connection my phone is basically a paperweight. I pay another company for that service so why am I paying Verizon nearly $120/ month? I’m getting very frustrated because I have been a loyal Verizon customer for 15 years. What’s going on? I’ve googled and seems I’m not the only one, something to do with Verizon not buying enough spectrum. Is it time to switch?

Comments

SynthpopAddict

If this is only a very, very recent problem, could be a network outage which you can check by going to the "Get help from Verizon" section on the right side of the forum page and then going to "Check network status" and entering your address to see if anything comes up.

If, however, you've been having terrible service for a long time...there are a few different causes, including but not limited to:

1) 5G doesn't have the range older wireless technology has, so with recent network upgrades, signal just isn't getting out to your rural area anymore.

2) If your SIM/eSIM is old, try getting a new one.

3) If your neighborhood did not use to have 5G or 5G UW service but now it does, your account needs to be reprovisioned so you can use all the available spectrum (if your phone bill is that much, you must be on one of the plans which allows you to use 5G UW). I've heard of people's phones failing to have internet connection after their city got 5G UW for the first time because of their accounts being set up for 4G and regular 5G only, as an example.

4) Check that all your software is up to date. It would help if you give the make/model of your phone so if someone else has seen the same issue, they could provide some better tips for that device.

Verizon_Support

Hello, KarlyHa, we know it's important to have reliable service! You mentioned a couple of locations where you're experiencing an issue. Are these the only places where you are running into trouble with your service? Is this happening both indoors and out? Can you tell us more about the issue you're running into?

-Lauren

KarlyHa

It’s significantly worse everywhere lately. I have an iPhone 13. When I try to check my network status I don’t have enough coverage for the page to load. I checked on my computer at work and it said there were no outages…

SynthpopAddict

If your phone is simply taking forever to get webpages to load, that's a slow data problem and not loss of service altogether. You mentioned you're in a rural area previously, which makes me think Verizon only has 4G service where you are. 4G towers can't handle as much traffic as the newer 5G technology can, and with more and more devices connecting to wireless networks now, may simply be a case of the towers in your neighborhood simply can't keep up anymore. Data speeds on 4G are also slower than mid- or high-band 5G. If you give the ZIP codes of the locations where you've been having these problems, hopefully a Verizon rep can tell you more.

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