Verizon cell signal lost at night

[mr__ed]

I’m having a curious situation with my cell phone that often occurs late at night. I’ve had Verizon for years, and it’s always been great. Lately I find that if I need to make a call later at night the call doesn’t go through and I get a message that “cell service not available”. The phone shows a strong signal (5 Bars). I needed to make an emergency call about 12:30 AM and couldn’t . This has never happened before to my knowledge. I’d prefer not to change providers, but if this continues I may need to. I’m wondering if any of you have had a similar experience?

I plan on contacting Verizon, but decided to post this thread first. In a late night emergency, the phone could prove useless.

[mr__ed]

I tried my phone at 2:00 AM this morning, and it appears to be OK now.

[Dutch_12078]

pianotuna wrote:

wa8yxm wrote:
PianoFish are you sure you are using that tower?

How would I know? How would I find out? Both phones have been shut down and then restarted.

It is a native Sasktel tower, and reseller Bell tower.

Signal strength was -103 on Sasktel, and -104 on Bell.

Speed test on Sasktel when not throttled is up to 85 Mps (often 60) and on Bell up to 40 Mps(usually 25).

When the tower is busy those speeds drop. Particularly on the Bell phone.

Out of curiosity, try moving further away from the tower and see if the numbers get better. One of my daughters lives about a mile from a VZW tower and gets a great signal, but when she walked her dog towards the tower she dropped bars when she got too close to it. I suspect the signal was overshooting her.

[MrWizard]

With good speeds on data and no problems
I would not worry about the signal strength numbers
You obviously have good bandwidth

[pianotuna]

wa8yxm wrote:
PianoFish are you sure you are using that tower?

How would I know? How would I find out? Both phones have been shut down and then restarted.

It is a native Sasktel tower, and reseller Bell tower.

Signal strength was -103 on Sasktel, and -104 on Bell.

Speed test on Sasktel when not throttled is up to 85 Mps (often 60) and on Bell up to 40 Mps(usually 25).

When the tower is busy those speeds drop. Particularly on the Bell phone.

[mr__ed]

I tried my phone at about 2 AM this morning from the same location in my room and it dialed out OK. I assume that it's now OK. The Verizon rep did a good job in assisting me. :C

[wa8yxm]

PianoFish are you sure you are using that tower?

I recall one call I made to T-mobile customer service we discussed signal strength and my comment was if the signal was any stronger I'd need to join the steeplejack's union (I'd be climbing the tower). He agreed.

[Rover_Bill]

mr. ed wrote:

gbopp wrote:
Did you check with any friends/neighbors who have Verizon to see if they have a similar problem?
It could be something with your particular phone?

It's probably best to contact VERIZON. Apparently there are several things that can cause your problem.

That's a good suggestion, but I'm living in a long-term hotel at this time and not too familiar with the neighbors.

??Hotel?? I would ask the hotel manager if I could test my phone reception in another empty room at night. Several years ago I stayed at a Days Inn and had no cell phone or WiFi access in my room. I got excellent access when I stepped out of my room in the hall, or the parking lot, or the hotel lobby. It appears that the hotel's WiFi repeater placements were causing destructive signal interference in my room.

[pianotuna]

I'm less than 500 feet from the cell tower. -103 db. How very annoying!

If you have an android phone here is how to check the signal strength:

Go to settings

tap about phone

tap status

tap sim card status

read the signal strength

Here is a good speed test (courtesy of Netflix)

https://fast.com/

[ktmrfs]

MrWizard wrote:
It should be noted
-80 db is a stronger signal than -100 db

Seems weird until you understand that Zero would mean optimum max signal saturation

And the measurement is how weak/far away
The signal is from optimum

-60 db is practically setting on the cell tower

exactly. Another note, in order to maximize the data capacity and number of users, usually the cell tower and phone will adjust power levels and/or channel so that the best signal level you get will be around -80db. Many times I've seen a channel or tower with a -60db signal level but it's never been the one the phone connects to, it's one in the -80db or so.

Kinda like a room full of people. If one person is shouting with a bullhorn, you can't hear anyone else, let alone carry on a conversation. If everyone is talking in a normal voice many many conversations can go on.

So to maximize channel capacity they adjust power levels for a desireable S/N ratio and error rate and do error correction in the phone or cell tower.

And again, those "bars" on the phone are NOT a reliable indicator of signal quality or signal level.

[mr__ed]

I just got off the phone with a very knowledgeable Verizon tech. He had me do some resetting things in the phone. I can’t describe it, but I won’t know for sure if it’s fixed until I need to make a call late at night. He also said it’s possible there were many callers using the cell tower, thus overloading the system. At 1:00 AM? I guess it’s possible. Anyhow, I feel better that I can now access the landline in an emergency, with a little difficulty. Thanks everybody for your suggestions!

[edatlanta]

A phone is a computer and how many times does a reboot of our home computer fix the windows issues? Same with a phone.

[MrWizard]

It should be noted
-80 db is a stronger signal than -100 db

Seems weird until you understand that Zero would mean optimum max signal saturation

And the measurement is how weak/far away
The signal is from optimum

-60 db is practically setting on the cell tower

[ktmrfs]

many things can affect cell signal quality. Some are:
1) number of users/cell site- large number of users with high BW use can affect signal quality
2) Landscape, buildings, humidity, all can affect cell signal strength
3) indoors or outdoors? signal strength can drop noticeably going inside a building or home
4) phone orientation
5) which cell site and channel you are connected to. Phone doesn't automatically switch to strongest signal if it is getting what it and the tower think is adequate. Going to airplane mode and back will cause a new search possbily to a stronger cell or stronger channel.

And finally the "bars" are a terrible indicator of signal quality. A better indication is to use either the cell phone signal strength indication in db. (usually through settings and phone info) or an app that gives recieved strength.
Signal strength of -90db or better is good, -100db usually adequate for voice/texting -120db is about the limit for service.

And there are conditions where the channel is good for straight text but not adequate for voice calls.

Recently we were camping and with my cell amp signal was near -100db, had LTE channel, and we could get and send straight text (no pictures), but phone calls failed about 90% of the time.

I've also had times when we could recieve calls fine, but trouble making calls.

[MrWizard]

Several factors and they could be cumulative
Distance from tower
Cell system maintenance being performed
(Signal traffic bandwidth would be reduced while some components are offline)