New York Dead Zones Are Just a Fact of Life

For the 20 million people living in the greater New York area, spotty cellular service is a constant source of frustration. To document the extent of the problem, The Wall Street Journal examined data on dropped and unsuccessful calls compiled by the Nielsen Co., which sends out equipment-filled vans to make 140,000 test calls a year across the five boroughs, Long Island, northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut.

The results raise a pressing question: Why is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. plagued with dead zones?

Carriers deserve only part of the blame, the Wall Street Journal says.  The city is one of their highest-profile markets, and even as they cut capital spending nationwide during the recession, they kept budgets high in New York, even if that spending didn't always keep up with the pace of smartphone sales.

Ask the people who build and maintain the city's networks, and they'll give you a dozen alternative excuses: Too many people. Too many buildings. Too much reflective glass. Too much water. Each plays a role, the Wall Street Journal says.

It all adds up to wireless dead zones dotting the city and its surrounding suburbs.

Take the West Side Highway, a notorious trouble spot where Nielsen recorded eight failed calls up and down Manhattan. There, phones get a signal only on one side of the road, from cell towers high atop office buildings. (The Hudson River is on the other side.) So when there's a hiccup with a connection to the cell tower on the Manhattan side of the river, there's no other tower to back it up, and the call drops.

Dropped calls also happen because of quirks in the way carriers have set up their networks. For example, AT&T Inc. routes calls south of 59th Street in Manhattan to a switch downtown. North of 59th, calls go to a facility in Westchester. So when an AT&T customer crosses 59th, calls can get dropped as the network reshuffles from one switch to the other. Nielsen recorded three fails on or near that dividing line. AT&T declined to discuss coverage at 59th in further detail.

Sometimes, there just aren't enough cell sites to handle the load.  But it always is difficult to get authority to put up new towers, anyplace. In New York, it is harder because of the fragmented ownership of buildings. Outside New York, it often is possible to negotiate once with an owner of hundreds of buildings.

The upshot? Service issues are likely to continue to be an irritant.