cell phone reception and household shielding (good, service, inside)

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Elcarim

See, around here, all our trips to, from and across town are in traffic and take significant amounts of time. ... captive audience with nothing better to do ... road noise in the background ...

Traffic?
held captive?
Road noise?

I think that I kind of remember those things.

That is when there are multiple cars on the road at the same time, and the flow slows down, right?

[Elcarim]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

Traffic?
held captive?
Road noise?

I think that I kind of remember those things.

That is when there are multiple cars on the road at the same time, and the flow slows down, right?

This is where the phrase "if we were going any slower we'd be stopped" comes into play!

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Elcarim

This is where the phrase "if we were going any slower we'd be stopped" comes into play!

I see.

And this happens when city folk have more than two vehicles on the road at the same time, right?



They slow down, because some ID-ten-T up ahead thinks she saw a bunny, so she slowed down, which caused everyone behind her to slow down, which caused, ....

[Elcarim]

Actually, there are no bunnies here. They've all been run over by the approximately 5 millions vehicles that run our roads here.

[tcrackly]

Originally Posted by NJ2ME

When I was just up last week, We have verizon and had service the ENTIRE time. Every once in a while we'd drop low bars at the bottom of a certain hill or so... but even after driving down our long road 12 miles into the "woods" with no street lights to our house, we had MORE bars then we do here in our New Jersey house... The only weird thing is even having 4 bars inside our house, we'd suddenly have dead spots and then it would go right back to 4 bars in the same spot in the house.

But.... metal roof? Like Forrest said.. now he's got me thinkin!

Driving out and about though, we really always had service out in towns especially.

I was talked into Verizon by my BIL in Cooper, ME. He figured we could get a family account with the push-to-talk feature because VZ supposedly doesn't set up accts Downeast. Strangely, though, their subscribers seem to have the best coverage there.
I opted for a pay as you go VZ phone just to deal with some pressing family issues. I get decent reception through much of the state so far, but it drops off in the national forest around Newry.

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by Coaster

Zymer, is it possible that the cell phone tower near you doesn't serve the company you have your cell phone plan with? If that's the case, you might be farther away than you think from the nearest tower.

I have Verizon Wireless, I'm hoping that their purchase of Unicell will result in an improvement for my coverage.

[peachie_in_maine]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

I saw a post, I began to respond, then I realized that we were entirely off-topic.

So as to save the mods the trouble of deleting my post, I am moving the discussion to a fresh thread.





I find that within my house I get very low signal. Even though I can see the flashing red light of a cell tower 300 yards away.

When I step outside, I get full signal.

The walls of my house are steel, and each piece of steel is grounded. Both to it's neighbor and to a grounding cable.

I wonder if the walls of your house might have some level of conductor built within them that would be acting as a low-level of shielding.

I have seen homes where they wrapped the house with chickenwire before plastering. Well that chickenwire could easily form the beginning of a Faraday cage.

?

In my house I have to press up against the door glass door or window to have a bar. I too can see the tower from my window. I step out side and I have good reception. So I don't understand it. My house isn't made of nuclear war repellent, so why does it act this way.

p.s. I can walk around those "big box stores" and have no worries. I don't understand it.

[NJ2ME]

Originally Posted by tcrackly

I was talked into Verizon by my BIL in Cooper, ME. He figured we could get a family account with the push-to-talk feature because VZ supposedly doesn't set up accts Downeast. Strangely, though, their subscribers seem to have the best coverage there.
I opted for a pay as you go VZ phone just to deal with some pressing family issues. I get decent reception through much of the state so far, but it drops off in the national forest around Newry.

Recently I was looking into a pay as you go for my son because he has asthma and food allergies and also goes to visit his dad down in Mississippi twice a year and I wanted him to always be able to contact me now that he has momments away from me since everyone is so confussed about his food allergies and what he can/can not have etc.... So anyway.... Since I have verizon I was going to go with pay as you go verizon..... Come to find out.... the coverage area for the pay as you go verizon plan showed differently in the state of MS, then the regular verizon coverage. The area that my sons father lives has an empty spot for the pay as you go making it use another carriers coverage and costing more.... BUT if he has the regular verizon, it is covered. So... I just added an extra phone to my plan.

I however think thats really strange that the coverage was different... its still verizon! but with their pay as you go, i would have gotton out of area charges.

[K-Luv]

Whether you get reception or not has to do with the strength of your phones built in antenna.

[juststoppinby]

I have US Cellular and I get great reception no matter where I am. I do not have a home phone we only use cell phones. I get reception all over the Bangor area, down through Lewiston-Auburn, Oxford Hills area and even up through Bingham and up onto Pleasant Ridge Plantation.