Cell Phone Coverage

City Council and staff have been discussing the issue with cell phone coverage in the City for years and while the City has an open-door policy for new small cell antennas within the City’s rights-of-way, the companies that own the small cell antennas such as Zayo Group and Crown Castle have not applied for new towers. In discussions with them the City has been told that the cell phone carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile do not see the benefit of adding service to the City because of our low density. City Council has met with Zayo Group and Crown Castle several times both as a group and as a smaller subcommittee but without much success. Ultimately these companies suggested that if City residents call the cell carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) enough, maybe that will generate interest in more small cell antennas for better coverage. The more feedback residents provide to the various carriers, the better informed they will be regarding the City's low coverage areas.

Here are some solutions you can try to improve coverage at home:

Enable Wi-Fi Calling 

If you have Wi-Fi at home, you can enable Wi-Fi calling on your cell phone, so that the call is routed to your Wi-Fi network instead of your phone service provider’s network. The Wi-Fi network in your home is typically much stronger, enabling better call quality. This change can be made in the Settings menu of your cell phone. For more information, here is a helpful Q&A.  

Purchase a Signal Booster 

Signal boosters capture cellular signal, clean it, and amplify it, allowing calls to be completed in areas they otherwise couldn’t. Boosters can be purchased for your home or your car.  Information about signal boosters is available here; anyone installing a booster will need to follow FCC guidelines (available at the same link).