Residents of Alberta are facing extensive reception issues on all telecom companies’ networks and are now calling upon the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to fix spotty cellphone service in the region — reports Global News.
Global News recently received numerous complaints of “dropped” calls and overall poor reception from residents of Calgary, Airdrie, and Edmonton. Calgary resident Ruth Thompson told the publication that she and her family experience dropped calls unless they “go down an alley or stand in a certain place in the house.”
Alberta’s reception issues are frustratingly not even limited to any one carrier. “I’m with Shaw. But I was previously with Bell. And I was previously with Telus. And my parents were with Rogers and my best friend was with Fido,” said Thompson. “And we’ve all had the issues.”
More and more Albertans are reaching out to the CRTC, Canada’s telecom and broadcast regulator, to take a close look at cellphone service in the province and get telecom companies to rectify the situation.
Heather McLaughlan, who lives in southeast Calgary and is on Bell’s cellular network, said she has been facing the same network issues for the past six months.
“We’ve had a lot of dropped calls,” said McLaughlan. “Calls that just go directly to voicemail or they don’t even come through. Text messages — same thing.”
According to McLaughlan, text messages sometimes take four days to be delivered. Bell told McLaughlan that they were working on the issue and on her nearest tower, but provided no ETA for a fix.
McLaughlan has requested the CRTC to intervene. She added that she was concerned cellphone service would degrade with more telecom companies merging. Rogers is currently fighting to acquire Shaw, Canada’s fourth-largest wireless player.
The CRTC said in a statement that, following July’s nationwide Rogers network outage, it has instructed all telecom companies to ensure reliable cellphone service across Canada and make sure that their networks are working properly for all Canadians.
Given that Albertans like Heather McLaughlan and Ruth Thompson still can’t make calls longer than a couple of minutes without getting disconnected, it doesn’t look like that directive is being strictly followed.
Global News asked the regulator for numbers on how many complaints it has received from Albertans over dropped calls and shoddy service but didn’t receive any information.
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Why aren’t more people using wifi calling? Most carriers offer it for free in Canada (some work worldwide for free).
And whose Wi-Fi do I connect to when I leave my house??
That’s another issue. It does solve the dropped calls at home issue.
The reason CRTC is slow to respond is maybe because Ian Scott is out having beers with the robelus.
lol
Perhaps these users should consider upgrading their phones instead of just changing their carriers?
Even with new 5G phone service in my neighborhood is poor have to revert to landline
This is an odd one… “Albertans have dropped calls”. It’s very odd considering the number of towers in the locations mentioned. Maybe some configuration updates are in order.
So. Not bad.
Wow Who cares?