Hannah Styles, hstyles@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Hello? Hello?
We in Western North Carolina are accustomed to repeating ourselves when attempting to make phone calls, with spotty cell service leading to dropped calls, unsent texts, and dead zones. After posing the question on Facebook if anyone is having the same problems that I have been with Verizon service, I received more than 70 comments, many reporting service has waned in areas that it was once reliable. So, what’s behind all this?
Karen Schulz, with Verizon’s Global Network and Technology Communications said company engineers have been combing through network performance data in our area and are not seeing any unusual traffic growth in the six primary counties in Western North Carolina.
“Nor are we seeing any network performance degradation compared to YOY (year over year) trends or third-party conducted wireless carrier network comparisons,” Schulz said by email.
However, the company frequently receives reports of problems during the tourist months.
“We regularly see a rise in reports of service changes in Western NC in summertime due to higher tourist traffic, terrain and foliage and believe that some of the issues being reported are attributed to that annual seasonal change,” she said.
She added they work directly with customers who call in and identify specific problem areas or changes in service.
Verizon is currently working in the Asheville area west to Waynesville to increase coverage and is continuing to prepare the area for 5G deployment.
“In the meantime, we continue our ongoing network investment in this area. In 2022 alone, we will deploy 16 new network solutions in Western North Carolina including new macro towers, small cell sites, capacity additions on current sites, and repeaters to increase 4G LTE capacity and coverage,” Schulz said by email.
Affecting far Western NC
Although the company is working on adding more coverage in the Asheville region, that doesn’t do much for areas west of Asheville.
Linda Behr of Franklin says she was a Verizon customer for about 23 years, and while the service wasn’t always great at their home in the Cowee community, it declined in the past year. “It’s the worst it’s ever been,” she said.
She said when someone calls, the call goes directly to voicemail, and they are often unable to make outgoing calls. Her husband is confined to their home, and if she is in town and he needs something, he might not be able to reach her. She says they aren’t the only ones, that it is a common problem for people throughout their community. With more people relying on telemedicine and needing to call for medical assistance, dropped calls aren’t just a nuisance. “This is a very serious situation,” she said.
Like many people, the Behrs no longer have a landline, and when they started having problems with their cell service, they checked into the possibility of getting a landline again. Behr said they were told the facilities were no longer available for a landline in their area.
Ray Behr said they could get a good cell signal but missed and dropped calls continued to be a problem. “I’ve talked to everybody in the world at Verizon,” he said. He was told the towers are overloaded.
“They can’t handle their capacity,” he said. “I solved our problem – I went to AT&T.” Now he says they don’t have any problems with their cell phone service.
Mitch Ford, a resident of Robbinsville, works in Sylva and said up until recently, he used to be able to use his phone almost the entire way to work and back.
“In the past, I could use my phone the whole trip except from Pinhook to Orr Branch on Highway 143. Now I drop calls regularly, most of the time in Sylva on Webster Road, I cannot receive or make calls,” Ford said.
Cassandra Ford of Swain County said she rarely has cell phone service in Alarka.
“It’s rare I even have one bar in Alarka at my parents’ house. I have to make calls using Wi-Fi or landline. My service used to be so much better around Bryson and Sylva. I filed a complaint with Verizon, and they said we are in a ‘marginal coverage’ area or something like that. Meanwhile, the WiFi and landline at my parents’ house wasn’t working and there was no way to send a text or call. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a safety issue. What if you have an emergency? And why are we paying for service we aren’t getting? I think most of it started when they came out with 5G.”
Graham County resident, Shelby Anderson, filed a complaint and was contacted by a representative from Verizon.
“The representative said there isn’t anything they can do about it because there are just too many people in the area for their cell towers to support, and the company is not planning to make any changes to our area,” Anderson said.
They did offer her advice to reset her network settings on her iPhone.
“It has actually helped a ton!”
Kayla Mullinax Ledford lives in the Almond community and said places she had service before no longer work.
“I filed a complaint with Verizon, but they claim there is no problem,” she said.
Pat Herrin, who lives in the Galbraith Creek community in Swain County, submitted a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission due to outages and no service at her home. She received a letter in response stating her complaint had been reviewed by Verizon.
“Thorough review by Verizon network engineers has determined that coverage in Ms. Herrin’s home area is poor due to mountainous terrain and close proximity to a nearby resort resulting in periodic spikes in population,” the letter from the FCC stated.
They recommended WiFi calling or a network extender.
Harder for workers, emergencies
Not only are the service issues annoying, they could also be dangerous, if you’re not able to use your phone in urgent situations and for those who must rely on their phone for work.
Sheryl Williamson, of Jackson County, said her job with social services depends on being able to make and receive calls sometimes in urgent situations.
“[I was] on call with a worker last weekend. Dispatch had to call me because they couldn’t get in touch with her. Her phone didn’t even ring the entire day! Not good when your job depends on it and your job is in child protection,” Williamson said. “It’s a huge problem. When our workers are out in the field doing home visits during the day and call into the office, calls are dropped or can’t get through. It’s a safety issue for our workers, and it interferes with the public trying to get in touch with us after hours.”
Swain County 911 Trainer Kristen Parton said dispatchers rely on cell phone service and towers to track the location of an emergency. That poses a serious problem if there is no service or the signal is not strong enough, and leaves responders with an emergency in an unknown location. Parton said sometimes they can identify the nearest cell tower without as much signal.
Is there any solution?
Verizon continues to attribute the problem to the mountainous region, more foliage and tourists in summer months, but says they are constantly reviewing the complaints to help better the problem.
Some things you can try to improve your service
To reset your network settings on an iPhone, go to settings, click general, scroll down to transfer or reset iPhone. Click reset, then reset network settings. Then your iPhone will turn off and reset the network, then come back on as normal.
Be careful while following these steps to not reset your iPhone to factory settings as this will delete all of the photos, contacts, etc. off of your phone. Preferably try doing this after an iCloud backup, just to be safe.
If you have Wi-Fi at home and have a smartphone, connect your phone to Wi-Fi calling so that you are able to make and receive calls/texts using your home’s Wi-Fi, and not relying on cell towers.
Restart your phone, in hopes of helping reconnect to the network’s nearest tower.