Service

[Coolieo2019]

I've had Verizon since the mid 2000s. I live in southwest Missouri. Has anyone else noticed how slow Verizon has become. I am line of sight to the cell tower not just one but 5 different towers. Closest one is 4 miles from me and I get 4 bars on it. The data color is yellow where I live which should be just fine. My dbm is between -100 & -85 and the data is horrible. I'm lucky if I get over 200kbps which is basically unusable in today's standards. All network bands are slow 2, 5 (worst), 13, even 66 is bad. Also the cell tower is one of the first ones put in my area. 3g was faster than 4g. I can switch towers to a other one by moving in my house and with 5 bars I can get up to 15mbps which is far short of what is promised. I can't switch carriers due to location.  I have a Galaxy S10+ so the phone isn't the issue. It happens to everyone who comes and lives around here regardless of thier phone. 

[SynthpopAddict]

There's a few things, of which one or any combination of, could be the cause:

1) If the closest tower is 4 miles away, 5G isn't going to be working all that great because 5G radio waves have a limited distance range.  If you get *any* 5G at all, it would be low-band 5G, which runs at pretty much the same speed as LTE.

2) Verizon has been doing some modifications to their network in recent months.  It's been pretty apparent to me they are replacing the older LTE cells on their towers with 5G cells.  This leaves less LTE cells on the towers.

3) If you are a prepaid customer, you have lower priority on the towers compared to postpaid customers.  If you're postpaid, it gets even more complicated.  Unlimited Welcome customers are deprioritized to Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Ultimate customers.  Although nobody has ever confirmed this, I would also be willing to bet those on a legacy postpaid plan are also being deprioritized to customers on one of the current top 2 plans.

4) Although you can see 5 different cell phone towers, not all of those towers may be used by Verizon.  I have 3 towers in my line of sight, and 2 of them are Pink Logo Place ones, as an example.  (Oddly, the 3rd is shared by Pink Logo Place and Verizon...yet my phone is constantly connected to a completely different tower altogether.  Long story.  And the Pink Logo Place had shockingly horrible service at my home!)

5) More and more devices are connecting to cell phone towers now, putting ever-increasing strain on towers as it's not just phones any more, but any "smart" device.

6) If your SIM card is several years old, it may be "stuck in the past" and getting a new SIM card, while also making sure your account is provisioned on the network to reflect current technology, may help.

[Coolieo2019]

I can confirm that all these cell towers are verizons as I have mapped called and tracked service for years. My SIM card is a 5g SIM only a few months old.  5g is non existent on Verizon where I live. AT&T has 5g along With T-Mobile but it's all lowland. I've tried all 3 carriers. AT&T is ok but I don't get service in the Lake coves. T-Mobile might as well forget service outside of town.  I have managed to lock my phone on a certain band after playing around with codes for a while.  Although all carriers data is finicky around my area.  I would upload pictures of the maps if I could.  They've built a new tower in my town a few years back so it take most of the load. It's a small town under 2,000. But everyone uses Verizon here.  I have the 2nd from the top plan. It works great closer to the major roads. 

[SynthpopAddict]

If Verizon has no 5G in your neighborhood and the other guys have spotty service somewhere or another, then what you're experiencing with the slow data is a combination of:

-LTE technology is 15 years old as of this point and not able to handle the amounts of traffic 5G would.  Theoretically, one LTE cell can take up to 1000 devices, but in real life, several hundred at a time is more realistic.  You'd have to be versed in telecommunications tech to understand the actual network throughput, as it varies.  (A Google search on this got me links which were beyond me.)

-Your area sounds pretty rural, so there's not quite enough incentive for the carriers to bring in more or faster 5G cells.  And there's no incentive for carriers to bring in additional LTE cells anywhere since all the marketing is about the newer 5G.

-There's probably not as many antennae on the towers where you are as compared to more densely populated areas, which means it's easier to get into a gap or sort of dead zone if you're at the wrong angle.

-Various geographic elements (hills, mountains, lakes, even thick forests) can absorb cellular signal.

-If your data is slow only at home, it's possible for devices generating strong EMF or even some routers with Wi-Fi to interfere with cellular reception.  But you mentioned in one spot of your house you're able to get 15Mbps down, which isn't all that bad for LTE.  Could be better, but it's hard to get more than 40Mbps down on LTE just because so many people have multiple devices now.

As an aside, IMO since Verizon has no 5G whatsoever in your town, you may not really be getting that much of an extra benefit for being on Unlimited Plus.  The draw of the top plans are being eligible for the really good 5G UW spectrum, and not being deprioritized on the network...but if there's less than 2000 people in town, I don't think deprioritization is that much an issue?

[vzw_customer_support]

We never want our customers to struggle with data, and we want to make sure you're getting the best service possible. The information already shared in this thread is great, and we also recommend troubleshooting to improve your service. The easist way to troubleshoot is to use this link to find your device and select the issue that most closely matches your symptoms: https://www.verizon.com/support/devices/#mobile

Please let us know if you don't notice any improvements.

~Jesse