The recently constructed 4G cell phone tower on Dick Hill is up and running bringing an improved signal to many, but there are still a few people that have not seen much in the way of improved signal.
The tower is owned by Horvath Communications and they are leasing space to Verizon. This tower is not exclusively a Verizon one because Horvath is in the business of making money by having providers rent space. The more carriers that are on this tower, the better their bottom line is and justifies building in Hartford. If you are a customer of ATT or Sprint, etc. try calling them and request that they consider coming to the Hartford tower so that you can also get a better signal. This tower can accommodate more than one carrier. Internet and cell is considered a factor in quality of life these days so I would like to see more carriers than just one on this tower.
The Verizon antennas operate on two bandwidths; 1900mHz and 700mHz. The upper band offers clearer cleaner signal but is not as resilient as the lower band. After I communicated with Verizon engineers, they tweeked the tower and increased the 700mHz band to get signal to harder to reach areas. Not all Verizon customers in Hartford will see a benefit. If you live down in a deep shadowed hollow, there is not much help for you other than planting a tall telephone pole and put an antenna atop that to create a hotspot in your house, reminiscent of that TV show Green Acres.
One tip the engineers told me that can help improve your signal is to turn your phone off and then turn back on. Apparently some people never ever turn their phone off, even when charging. Their phone is their alarm clock, watch, etc and is always on. By turning off and then back on it forces the phone to re-search for a new signal. Your phone could be locked on to a weaker signal while ignoring a stronger one. After doing this my daughter’s Samsung Edge went from 1 bar to 4 bars. All just from turning off and back on. It took a few minutes to see the 4 bars as the phone did its searching.
Another thing I discovered by doing a survey in my own house is that it makes a large difference what phone you have. My house has three Verizon phones and they do not all get the same signal strength. Side by side we compared a Samsung Edge and an iphone 5. The Samsung had better signal, so I think a lot of this depends upon what internal antenna the phone was manufactured with. My ancient 12 year old Samsung 3G slider did not see much improvement. I think in order to help that I need to go back in time 12 years when it was considered modern. The tree times I dropped it in my pond over the years and had to dry out in the oven probably has not helped much either.
Dana