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Bad cell phone reception in tall towers?

nopacnone

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I just moved into a new unit at Aura, on the 46th floor and the cell phone reception is pretty terrible! I have to leave my phone at the window to make sure I get calls.
Is this an issue that a lot of people encounter when they live or work high up?
Maybe they still need to install repeaters/antennas at the top of the building?
I had a housewarming the other night, and all the guests seemed to have the same issue, so its clearly not the provider.
 
I just moved into a new unit at Aura, on the 46th floor and the cell phone reception is pretty terrible! I have to leave my phone at the window to make sure I get calls.

Most cell towers are pointed slightly downward as most users are near the ground.

Aura, being a much taller addition to the neighbourhood, may need a few adjustments in the way antennae are aimed.
 
I work in a Certain Large Downtown Office Tower and the landlord was obliged to partner with the telcos on a system of internal repeaters. Signal's good now, awful when we moved in. We rushed deployment of a wifi network just so our phones would at least get email. Start bellyaching to the condo board perhaps?
 
Which company are you with? It seems that Bell/Telus don't have as many towers as Rogers within the block of the condo. Being on Rogers would be your best bet for now
 
Surely this is normal in a tall tower. I was only about half-way up in First Canadian Place the other day and I noticed my Rogers mobile had dropped, even with a large window next to me, and a good view of the CN Tower.

I'd think if one was at home, one would just use a normal phone. It's not like one is going to spend much time with a mobile phone stuck to the side of one's head ...
 
Your condo board may decide to partner with a telco to put a cell tower on your building which would greatly improve reception. Seeing as Aura is the tallest tower in the neighbourhood, I am sure they have already approached the board about setting up a tower.

Luna Vista at CityPlace partnered with Rogers to install their cell tower on the rooftop. Since that went up, my reception was amazing at Luna.
 
Barely anyone still uses normal phones now days.
I don't know about that ... perhaps for children perhaps, but for many people they are still widely used.

And there's so many locations, mobile coverage is poor. Even in my house, in the basement, it isn't great, and I can miss calls, and I live right next to a major artery.

And I've seen some apartment buildings where the landlord has cheaped out, and the door buzzer goes to people's phones, rather than having a hard-wired buzzer in each unit. But then now it goes to some people's mobiles ... which is a disaster if you have two or more people living in a unit ... especially combined with poor reception.

Surely the brain cancer risks from mobile phones would keep many on land lines.

And the sound quality on land lines is so much better ... particularly for conference calls, or when using multiple handsets. I've had conference calls with a hundred or so people on, that we've all been told very clearly not to be using mobiles, because of the problems they create.

And reliability is a lot better ... if the power is out, the back-up power for the mobile towers only lasts for a 12-24 hours or so.

I'll keep my land-line any day. Good old Bell copper wires ... that will run for weeks without any hydro.
 
^

Not only do I try not to use landlines, I even try to avoid normal cellular calls on my mobile. Compared to newer VOIP services like Google Talk, BBM Audio and Facetime Audio the poor audio quality of traditional phone calls is surprising.

And I never thought I'd notice the difference but Facetime Audio really is much better...
 
Not only do I try not to use landlines, I even try to avoid normal cellular calls on my mobile. Compared to newer VOIP services like Google Talk, BBM Audio and Facetime Audio the poor audio quality of traditional phone calls is surprising.

And I never thought I'd notice the difference but Facetime Audio really is much better...
Yes, a valid point. I'm still suspicious of VOIP after some early disasters I saw ... I knew someone once who 50% of her calls ended up somewhere in upper New York State, and 50% of her calls were for someone in New York state ... weeks later, she finally dropped her (it was some recognisable name) VOIP because they couldn't figure it out. But they might have mastered sound now ... early on it was very poor.

But they still haven't mastered how it keeps working during a power failure. And the one thing I 100% want in a power failure is my phone line.
 

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