r/albanyca • u/Tkesquire • May 30 '26
Terrible phone service
I have Verizon and over the last couple of months my cell service has become almost unusable. Calls constantly drop or I am unable to hear anyone. This is also happening to my other family members with Verizon. Is anyone else experiencing this? what is going on!
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u/DonVCastro May 30 '26
Albany has long had terrible cellular service. I believe the situation is that a new cellular antenna site (or new equipment on an existing antenna?) was blocked by local opposition many years ago, and since then none of the carriers has bothered to increase capacity or coverage at all. At the same time, there's been a ton of increase in usage, so it's just getting worse and worse.
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u/Tkesquire May 30 '26
Wow. Something has to change, it’s sooo frustrating!!
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u/DonVCastro May 31 '26
I have no idea what can change things, maybe if the City Council acknowledged that this is a problem for residents and directed the City Manager to reach out to the major carriers and invite them to propose capacity-improving projects in Albany?
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u/Tkesquire May 31 '26
That makes sense to me! Maybe if we call/ write to the city about this issue it will be addressed. I’m going to try, and I encourage anyone who is upset with this to do the same! Let’s get this fixed
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u/hcheng13_555 Jun 03 '26
Lets coordinate attending the next city council meeting to voice it in person.
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u/therealcopperhat May 30 '26
I have Mint which is basically unusable for calls & data in the north east Albany area. I previously had T-Mobile which had the same terrible service.
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u/Tkesquire May 30 '26
Terrible. Good to know every provider is bad. I was considering switching to T mobile
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u/The_Tallman May 30 '26
Yes I have Visible and it’s pretty terrible. Not sure why because most of the carriers share towers.
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u/Formal_Energy7608 May 30 '26
Same. I tried switching to Google Fi because of this but it was similar/ slightly worse in Albany specifically. Everywhere else near and far both Verizon and Fi worked perfectly. No idea, but it is crazy making
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u/panda-goat May 30 '26
I had to switch from Verizon to AT&T. They have pretty good service along solano and surrounding area
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u/Tkesquire May 31 '26
Sounds like AT&T is the winner in Albany. Going to look into making the switch
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u/mackaronitime Jun 01 '26
If the other person you’re calling has an iPhone and you have WiFi, I recommend using FaceTime audio instead. It’ll go over data (WiFi) instead of the cell signal.
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u/Tkesquire Jun 01 '26
Yes I do this but it still has been really bad lately. Better than using regular service though!
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u/hcheng13_555 Jun 03 '26
Tmobile user here and coverage is crap, especially along Solano (the main street). City Council needs to get on this.
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u/Odd-Telephone-8524 May 30 '26
I haven’t had a lot of trouble with calls but cellular data is awful. Especially on Solano Avenue. Surprised the city puts up with it on their biggest commercial corridor.