I've suspected Verizon has slipped in its coverage, but last on the list? Whew. Gonna shop around.

They must know some tricks in Norwich. My phone will say it has 3 bars of 5g but then can't even load Reddit. Real pain while working there since we have to update costumer info on tablets and will often have to drive almost over to Hanover to actually get service.

The results from the article:

(percent of the state's homes and businesses in areas where calls can go through successfully.)

AT&T 55%

FirstNet 53%

USCellular 47%

T-Mobile 41%

VTel 37%

Verizon 26%

I’ve had Verizon since I’ve had a cellphone, 2005, and it always seems to work better than my friends with AT&T, except for a few mountain towns.

Me too. Until recently... I'd always assumed V was the best service around.

Try turning off 5G.

I’m not sure why, but when I enable 5G on my phone, I can’t get a good connection even when I have multiple bars. Then I turn off 5G and it’s fine.

I’m not saying it’ll fix things, but it’s worth a try.

The tablets aren't 5G and have the same issue. You can have 4 bars LTE and still nothing.

This is just my opinion: I enjoy living in limited cell service. It feels like the time of landline only…

Landlines are extremely important. I have an adversarial relationship with my cell phone.

On the lighter side, my wife and I were reminiscing about party lines.

Surprised no one is blaming this on the out-of-staters...yet.

Ah, yes, wonderful. No calls completed from any carrier at my house and certain stretches of my commute.

These must either be: A) very recent developments or B) flawed results in some way. I had T-mobile for years pre-pandemic & it worked almost nowhere I went in VT; places where folks with Verizon could usually get signal.

> Last winter, Gov. Phil Scott proposed spending $51 million in federal aid to expand cellphone service in Vermont, particularly in the rural areas where service is least reliable. Scott and Public Service Commissioner June Tierney said building 100 cellphone towers would help remote workers, the tourism industry and emergency responders, in particular. But lawmakers did not agree, and the proposal did not advance.

Why? How is this a bad thing in any way

Norwich is SO bad for cell service and yeah, your phone will tell you it has service but then you can't do anything, like use your phone for payments at the farmers market.

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Does anyone have stats for Xfinity cell coverage? They’re the new game in town so I suspect not, but they offer great deals on cell service

Some possibilities: 100 ugly cell phone towers and the access roads needed to build and service them, ongoing subsidies to attract operators, other/better uses for $51 million.

My area is all in red with AT&T being the best. Verizon coverage has never been great in my neighborhood and they've told me it's because I'm too close to the lake and that water impacts cell signals. I've begged for years for change, and they kept telling me there was nothing they could do. My husband recently switched to Cricket (AT&T) and suddenly he has service, while not perfect, it's at least something. I think it's time for me to leave Verizon too.

USCellular ugh don't get where they get this from does anyone even use them anymore? Map shows good coverage in my part of the NEK but you pretty much have to use a booster and a yagi antenna. Smoke signals would be more efficient.

> better uses for $51 million.

Heck they gave a shit ton to our CUD to bring out fiber and while yes they are very slowly doing so the monthly fees are insane! Over a hundred a month for 250/250 and what a load of shit 79.99 a month for 50/50!!!! Was hoping to switch from Starlink once we got fiber but nope fuck that.

It's kinda the nature of VT the phone or tablet can hear the tower but the tower can't hear you is essentially whats going on.

Its just frustrating having to drive 10+ minutes out of the way after every job, it can easily add an hour to my day. It's the only town in happens in for me.

Think it’s been AT&T for more rural comprehensive coverage for awhile now. But I’ve noticed my friends with Verizon always had faster speeds than I did in the cities.

I hear ya my old place in N Central VT was horrible. Always had full bars getting signal from up high in Stowe the phone just didn't have the power to hit it back. Had a small area in one window to place the phone to get service. Held it there with thumbtacks.

Misleading information in the article. When you dial 911 you gain access to all reachable towers regardless of your carrier. If you have no service on Verizon but are near an ATT tower you will get service.

Pretty sure xfinity uses the Verizon network.

If they were wind towers with cell towers attached would it make it better? /s

I offered some possible reasons, not an opinion. I don't know if you can co-locate cell antennas and wind turbines; anyway, large-scale wind projects appear to be dead in Vermont.

I do have an opinion, though, the state should prioritize bringing broadband internet service over cable/fiber to rural areas way ahead of cell service.

I think the blades would cause interference of some type but anyways there are not too many here now and I think you are right about any future projects being dead. And the state/fed is subsidizing the heck out expansion but it should come with price caps or something. I mean as I wrote above 70 a month for 50/50 on fiber?? Whats the point can do better t-mobile home net or similar for less. Heck even DSL 80/20 is about 40 out this way.

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while! I have Verizon and while the coverage in the I-91 corridor has improved, outside that area it hasn’t and in some cases it’s gotten worse. For example, at my house the reception has gotten worse. It has gone from 4 bars several years ago to 2 and sometimes 1 summer or winter (so leaves aren’t a factor). And the next town north I have no coverage, but I’ll be standing next to someone at a ballgame who has full coverage and they usually say they have AT&T. Really thinking of switching service now.

As a Verizon Wireless customer since 2000 (when I saved up money and got my first Nokia in high school) I don’t know about this 🤔. But good for the other companies if they’ve caught up and surpassed Verizon! Back in the early days Verizon was a clear winner in coverage compared to some of my friends phones.

Yeah. Verizon here. Not a Vermont resident, just subscribed because I loved the state so much when I visited, but I didn’t have service the majority of the time I was there.

Same

Here is the direct link to the maps coverage maps

So I use Google Fi, best switch ever!

Starlink is $110 and with the current over-subscriptions, their rate has fallen to something around 65/15. 250/250 is still a much better deal.

Here's something wrong with that map:

Here in Pownal, at the bottom of rt7 just before you cross into mass, is some of the best service in the town. By which I mean: calls and texts go through, and you have enough data throughput to surf the web or whatever. But the map shows yellow.

Whereas, up on Northside drive in Bennington, around Walmart, CVS, etc. You can neither send or recieve texts, nor nor reliably make calls. (And forget about internet anything.) But the map shows shades of green.

This map is Bullshit.

It does, and I think only in areas serviced by 5G. TMobile is the same, though it works fine on 4G if you can convince the sales to give you the modem.

The article says that in Calais there was a proposal to build a tower but it was voted down, and the article presumes that this is because nobody wanted the tower near them. Perhaps a similar issue statewide?

Ya I keep hearing this not for me though. And how can 250/250 for over a hundred bucks be a good deal in any world for fiber? Fiduim is about 70 for a gig same with BTC. EVFiber is 134 for a gig way too much IMO and VTell is 39.95 right now for a gig. With the tax pay payer funds they have been getting they should pass it on.

And for the Starlink stuff just ran a test while making this reply 205/18 and here is the link before you call BS it's timestamped too.

https://www.speedtest.net/result/14100345895

How about in The island's

AT&T bought Rural Cellular (I think that's what it was called?) back about 15 years ago. It was a company that basically just ran cell towers in VT and WY, IIRC.

I'm in Irasburg with verizon and get little to no coverage. I have to hike up to the top of the mountain I live on if I want to make a call lol.

Had them for a few years and while it was a good price back then times have changed. I pay 15 monthly now for unlimited calls/text and 5 gigs through US Mobile. They even let you try for free and can choose verizon or t-mobile. Google fi even switched my old number to a google voice line so I can still get calls it just rings my new number. And having the US Cellular as one of the other Fi providers was disappointing to say the least. Constantly having to force it back to T-mobile as US Cellular was horrendous where I frequent.

I was seeing speeds around 75/20 when I cancelled starlink in August. Sometimes it would go up to maybe 120/20, but it depended on the time of day. For some unknown reason it would also drop out for a couple of minutes around 2pm each day, We get 40/20 from TMobile, it's more consistent and a lot cheaper.

You need to understand the difference between anecdotal data (i.e. your own personal experience, on your particular phone, and your cell plan) versus crowd-sourced/sampled data (more representative of everyone’s plans and phones and situations).

This map is suspect. Many of the areas in yellow and light green I know for a fact should be red

So it's actually worse than "lacking"

40/20 would kill me got 5 kids all with toys we need the bandwidth. Going on about a year now with Starlink no issues with slowing speeds at all. In fact it's has gotten a bit faster now. Sometime in the last few weeks it started spending a fair part of the day pointed more easterly instead of north. Getting to some unused sats over the Atlantic would be my guess.

> crowd-sourced/sampled data

Pretty sure this was one guy a bunch of phones and a Prius.

We have Verizon in southern Vermont. If you go to the farthest northern room on the second floor in the house, you can sometimes get one bar.

We do wifi calling in order to have service. Service is spotty when traveling.

We've used Verizon for more than a decade. We have made several trips to the middle of the country with no issues. It's ridiculous to pay as much as we do and get no service in our home. We are looking into other options, so this helps a lot, thank you!

I've been using T-Mobile since I got here in 2016 and coverage has expanded way more than it was back then, I used to basically have zero coverage outside of Burlington, some of St Albans, and Montpelier, and a few other small areas, but I can get a consistent signal through most highways and small towns now. I still get plenty of deadzones, but my gf has Verizon and she used to get coverage way more than I did, and now it's literally the opposite.

I get great 5G on US Cellular in southern VT

The service in this state is a joke. It’s a serious safety issue, I’m fully in favor as many towers as it takes to have universal coverage.

Those lawmakers who voted against should be voted out. It shouldn’t even need to be voted on. It’s a safety issue on rural mountain roads especially in the winter time. Put up towers everywhere.

Currently I pay 50 bucks for two phone lines that are unlimited text talk and international.

Works great and all their phones have wi fi talk/text and built in vpn. I have not really found anything that can beat it.

Weird...I deliver pizza in Hanover and cell service is AWFUL there but I actually can get it in Norwich (at least around Main st.)

Ya I just had the single line so no multi discounts and was on the pay as you go data plan. Never used much a buck or two's worth a month maybe. But that was 25 plus fees and stuff so I am still saving ten bucks and get 5 gigs of data. Wifi calls/text as well but no vpn but I have a multi device plan anyways if I need it.

> Nearly five years ago, Chase drove a state-owned Prius 6,000 miles on Vermont roads for an earlier test of cellphone coverage and released a report in 2019. This year’s test was carried out by a contractor called Ookla and presented opportunities for Vermonters to provide data. The department and Ookla worked with drivers from the state Agency of Transportation who traversed 6,500 miles of Vermont roads between July 1 and September 15.

Read it more carefully.

Lol not much here in the NEK that I have seen. Seems US Cellular is all "partner" coverage north and west of WRJ. If 5g is your thing you have to go all the way down to Springfield for that with them.

Ok be a jerk. But your still wrong so think on that a bit before jumping down someones throat. I noticed you left this part out which was the next sentence after your quote.

"Chase said he hadn’t yet compared the results of the two tests, and the report released on Thursday doesn't include the data obtained through crowdsourcing."

You read it more carefully. I was wrong about which test but it's still not "crowd-sourced data". Have a nice day a nice try at a smear.

T mobileis pretty good. And in the north norht north I get 5g

Can confirm. Exact same experience with coverage. Sprint user since the early 2000's here. When they made the switch over to T-Mobile a year or so ago, my coverage went from nothing to actually pretty darn good.

Interesting! Especially since they are cutting into Verizon customers w/ cheaper rates.

I personally use ATT and drive for a living, and I can say it does "ALRIGHT." My work phone I have to run uses Verizon, and it isn't horrible either, but they both throughout day to day have dead spots where the other gets service. I don't remember the name of the company I had before ATT bought them out, but they had excellent service wherever, but I think that due to them being a local third party supplier.

I have Fi and works great in *most* places around Windsor County. But head up to Orange, Caledonia and down to Windham and it's very unreliable. Happy with it for now, but if I need to move around in the future, I may think about switching.

I have T-Mobile and its really good. They have built 5G towers in many places in VT in the last 2 years. Works well in all populated areas and major roads. Like all the others, suffers in rural areas.

Um. Not just me, dickhead. Any number of other people--including my fiancé who has ATT--have said the same thing; Everyone up here knows where they can and CANNOT get cell service.

But, you know, fuck you for being presumptuous enough to think I was some kid who need "anecdotal" defined for me. 🙄

What were YOU doing in '79? I was having sex.

Verizon has decommissioned it’s 3g towers and has not replaced them with 4g ones yet. Their service has suffered as a result.

I work for a company that had an access point on a wind tower and vibration was an issue.

NIMBY-ism that's why. People want more towers, just not near them lmao.

A Vermonter will be stopping to help you on that mountain road before you could reach your phone to call. We don't need coverage on every inch of land, especially not mountains of national forests. Mountains ≠ suburbs.

I totally agree. There is no service on Route 30 through Dummerston/Newfane! Still no cell service at my house. Not expecting it pretty much ever.

Interesting. I had always thought perhaps the blades would block the RF depending on the materials used but I can see this for sure. Thanks.

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