Dropped calls and lost signal: Why cell coverage isn't perfect

SALT LAKE CITY — In the year 2016, many wonder why cellphone coverage at their home or office has yet to improve much. Or, they wonder why the Facebook check-in from the game of the year still proves challenging, if not impossible.

The fact is, the improvements in cellphone connectivity and data speeds over the past 10 years have been remarkable. Challenges, however, will always remain. For starters, everything from geography to population growth and building construction can prevent calls from completing or cause data speeds to slow. The question is "why."

To start, let's look at how a cellular network works. Cellphones use radio waves to communicate with nearby towers and a call or data connection can be completed over both land lines between towers and the wireless arrays on top of towers, depending on traffic. Towers are constructed in such a way as to provide an overlap in coverage as one is passed from tower to tower while driving, for example.

Each tower has a finite amount of traffic it can handle at any one time. By design, the coverage area of any single tower will shrink in order to handle higher than normal traffic. Put a large number of people in one place and have them all attempt to make calls — such as rush hour traffic or a stadium full of people — and a gap may form in the normally overlapping coverage between multiple cell towers. Hence, a dropped call or loss of data connectivity.

Cellular carriers speculate as to where new towers may be needed months or years in advance of population growth and commercial development. They sometimes guess wrong. Zoning regulations and red tape can prevent or delay the construction of cell towers in places with even a known need. Natural terrain features such as mountains or valleys can inhibit coverage even when towers are plentiful.

Believe it or not, an office building that is located near a freeway can have perfect coverage throughout the day and struggle to maintain call volume during rush hour traffic jams. As multitudes call home to report traffic delays, gaps in the coverage form.

At a football game in a stadium full of 75,000 people, the same problems can develop as too many attempt to upload photos to social media at one time.

Today, carriers are increasingly solving the connectivity problems associated with high temporary traffic with expensive mini tower systems installed in stadiums and commercial buildings around the country. Microcells can be installed in homes with poor coverage, rather inexpensively, that use a broadband Internet connection to provide for constant coverage within the home.

While it's true that poor coverage can often linger for years in any particular area, and carriers do have difficult decisions to make in terms of weighing the cost of cellphone towers with the potential for customers in a given area, it is likely that your carrier wants to improve coverage quicker than is often possible. Once a tower is approved by local zoning ordinances, it can still take months to get the tower built and activated.

Steve Jobs once famously told the Wall Street Journal, in response to complaints about the iPhone 4's antenna issues, that "when AT&T wants to build a tower in Texas, it takes about three weeks to get approval. When AT&T wants to add one in San Francisco it takes three years."

Increasingly, it isn't just government red tape that holds up tower construction. Home owners associations are increasingly popular and often it's the neighborhood itself fighting the construction of new towers that may harm views within the neighborhood. Carriers get creative, of course, with towers that replicate trees and natural surroundings.

Carriers also seek out private land owners and will lease space on top of buildings or in farmer's fields to build new towers or share space on existing structures.

Many assume that cell towers are entirely wireless and are unaware of the necessary underground land lines that connect the towers to one another. Obviously, towers can be built more quickly where the underground utilities are already built out to provide power and data connections to the towers.

Newer buildings often pose fewer challenges for cellphone coverage but older construction with thick walls made of concrete, brick and steel can pose problems for the radio waves that allow your cellphone to talk to nearby towers. If you combine construction issues with large numbers of people, such as an office building or apartment complex, the need for in-building solutions provided by a carrier could be necessary.

Above all, rest assured that carriers do want to know where coverage issues persist. Carriers know where they have large customer bases and generally do their best to address coverage accordingly.

AT&T's Mark the Spot and Sprint's Sprint Zone app allow mobile users to mark areas, via GPS, that have poor coverage while on the go away from home or work. Network technicians use this data to identify areas with frequent complaints that will serve their customer bases well. Future towers and existing tower upgrade needs can be easily identified over time.

Cellphone reception, based on current technology, will unfortunately never be perfect. There will likely always be neighborhoods that favor one carrier over another. Armed with a little knowledge, however, it is possible to identify and improve coverage issues in most situations.

If not, comedian Louis C.K. reminds us that a few minutes without our phones each day is probably a good thing and even "the (worst) cellphone in the world is a miracle."

Mike Stapley is a father of two, is Business Sales Manager for a telecom company and is an aspiring novelist living in Salt Lake City. Contact him at mstapley4@gmail.com