Poor cell coverage in Squamish BC

[EricD]

EXTREMELY POOR cell coverage in Squamish BC, now worse. Anyone else have this issue?

[BellKris · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @EricD. Welcome to the Bell Community, and thanks for your post.

We're sorry to hear about the difficulties you've been having. Were you still in need of assistance? If so, for the Community to be better able to assist you, could you please provide further details as to the issues you're experiencing?

Do keep in mind that many factors can limit signal strength; topography, environmental conditions, line of sight to towers, types of buildings in your area, etc. 

• Have you tried changing the network settings in your phone?
• Are the issues only happening indoors at home, or outdoors as well?
• Do you know of anyone else in the area having similar issues?
• Have you tried using Wi-Fi calling where available?
• What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?
• Have you gotten in touch with our technical support team to open a ticket?

You may also find our How To article Troubleshooting voice calls on your Bell Mobility phone helpful. We'd also recommend checking out our How To article on Troubleshooting data connectivity on your Bell Mobility phone

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

[Jeff OB]

Yes,  both my wife and I.  Lots of calls always dropping out or cutting out.  Almost all the time.

[EricD]

Hi @BellKris 
Thank you for looking into this.
Poor Bell reception in the Sea to Sky region is a well known and documented problem. I have an iphone 14pro and rarely get 5G or any good reception. Last year I also upgraded both my SIM card and service package to ensure it ran 5G no problem, which I have verified my phone does for example in third world countries or large Canadian cities.

Answers to your questions:

• have you tried changing the network settings in your phone?
  Yes with a Bell agent last year - no change but I'd try again?
  
  
• Are the issues only happening indoors at home, or outdoors as well?
  The issues occur especially indoors, at home but also often occur outdoors, to be specific, in the city of Squamish and Whistler as well as surrounding front country areas.
  
• Do you know of anyone else in the area having similar issues?
  Yes, I own a guiding and adventure company as well as know allot of people in town. Most have switched to Rogers whom it seems provides better coverage for backcountry areas. However several neighbors and friends of mine also complain about this issue. I am sure you must have logged many complaints over the year regarding your extremely poor service reception in our area.

Have you tried using Wi-Fi calling
I have wifi calling enabled in my iphone and it does improve. If possible, I call people on Whatsapp as this platform provides much better, uninterrupted reception. My wifi is provided by Telus. Could you please answer this question for me. Part of my Bell package includes no charge long distance to the US. When I use wifi, I get a message that standard long distance charges will occur. Is this so, if I use wifi assist to make a call, will I be charged long distance fees?

• What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?
  I have spoken to agents like yourself as well as my Bell store sales person over the years to no avail. I understand that part of the issue has to do with our area not having adequate fiber as well as not enough cell tower power - but that's not my problem.
• Have you gotten in touch with our technical support team to open a ticket?
  I have in the past but not for this issue as my experience in resolving the issue has been extremely poor. The problem persists and before leaving Bell I wanted to ensure I had given the company a fair chance to either fix the problem or provide me with such a good price it's worth suffering the very poor reception. Even then, I'm always forced to go outside, rain or shine, snow, etc to take business and personal calls. At was so exasperated that I took the time to join the forum and express my severe dissatisfaction.
  My father was a Vice President at Bell who handled Bells Saudi Arabia contract. I worked there as a summer student and phone technician for years. Bell can also trace its roots all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell. What a shame that the CEO and board of directors don't value the simplest of their base service to do what it takes to be #1. For example provide Canadians with excellent phone service including small cities, and fair pricing. If the problem persists I will leave Bell as your lifetime client - 30 plus years...

[BellKris]

Thanks for all the details, @EricD.

We'll be reaching out in a private message to assist further. Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.

Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

[Dmsquamish]

The cell reception has been very bad in Squamish, British Columbia. I’ve been living here since 2008 and I’ve been using Bell this whole time but this last year their service had gone downhill quite dramatically.

Quite often I can hardly get 2mbs of download speed when I run the speed test on the Bell website and my internet cuts off every half hour for about 5-10minutes even though I use to have great reception here for the last 10+years. Even the bell app can’t load quite often due to the very slow speed. 

It’s almost like they don’t have enough towers for the amount of people here and you get kicked off the tower. This has been happening every single day these last few months. It’s to the point where it’s impractical to do anything of importance like trading stocks due to getting kicked off during important transactions. 

Bell you are not delivering the service that I am paying for. 

[dks · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your concern. I checked my favourite cell tower map  and can see twelve Telus cell towers in and around Squamish. Bell uses Telus towers west of the Manitoba/Ontario border. Cellular signals are dependent on many factors, including your physical location, number of users on a cell site, topography and more. You may find this Support article useful in troubleshooting data problems.   

[Dmsquamish]

I’ve been living here 15 years, so unless the mountains changed their location I don’t see how topography can affect my signal, it worked fine for over a decade. I will give Roger’s a try and see if it makes a difference. 

[Dmsquamish]

Update: I appear to have fixed the problem by going into my iPhone cellular settings and turning off the 5g network. Speeds are back to normal on the LTE network. Maybe Squamish doesn’t have the infrastructure yet to support this 5g stuff that Bell has been selling us? I don’t know enough about this to comment any further.