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.
Are you sure the cellular tower was a Verizon Wireless one?
I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.
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
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
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport
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!!
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?
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
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport
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!!
Zip code: 49807. Data and text are marginally better, but I rely on a satellite service for data, not my phone.
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.
Thanks for this information, we don't see any known issues in your area. How long have you been experiencing these issues? Are there other experiencing the same issues?
MahrizaM_VZW
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport 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!!
It started 2 or 3 months ago, and affects LTE data on both our phones and our canteens, even when outside our house. The drop in data speed is measurable using speed tests, and went from 10 MB download to 1.5 MB download. Upload speed has dropped, but not as dramatically (from 8 MB to 5 MB).
Sent from my iPhone
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
