Murphy – Verizon gained notoriety as a cellular phone service provider with the help of the slogan, “Can you hear me now?”
In Cherokee County, public officials say the answer to that question lately is, all too often, “No.”
“People are experiencing dropped calls in areas where calls used to not drop, and people are experiencing less signal strength in areas where they used to have stronger signal strength,” County Manager Randy Wiggins said. “Also, people are having issues with data strength, being able to pull up a web browser in places where you used to have pretty fast speed; now it’s difficult to even get a page to load. I personally have noticed a reduction in the quality of cellular service probably over the last at least six months or longer.”
The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a motion during their Jan. 10 meeting that allowed Wiggins to send a letter to state Rep. Karl Gillespie and state Sen. Kevin Corbin (both R-Frankin) formally requesting their help in attempting to resolve the issues. Wiggins said Gillespie suggested the action during a meeting earlier in the day.
“What we’re hearing from the public, I experience it myself and people I talk to, it’s county wide,” Wiggins said. “It’s kind of an issue everywhere, and it’s definitely an issue in Murphy. I hear a lot of my employees mentioning how their signal strength is not what it was even here in the courthouse.”
Wiggins said he doesn’t know if the issue is limited to Cherokee County or if it is affecting a broader area of western North Carolina and beyond. He said Gillespie asked for specific names of people, their specific Verizon cellular phone numbers and their locations to help pinpoint locations where the service disruptions are occurring.
Wiggins said he has not spoken to anyone at Verizon beyond correspondence with area store employees. He said he has been told that the issue could stem from a combination of an influx of people coming into the county in recent years, taxing the 4G system, and the process of replacing older equipment with new equipment as the company upgrades to 5G.
According to the technology review website Tomsguide.com, Verizon built its initial 5G network on a system called mmWave. While the technology provides faster speeds, mmWave signals do not carry far and cannot penetrate certain physical barriers. Wiggins said that may be at least part of the problem in a rural, mountainous area like Cherokee County, where residents’ homes are often surrounded by trees.
“We understand 5G does not penetrate as well as 4G,” Wiggins said. “If you live in an area with a lot of trees around you and you currently get some very spotty, limited 4G service, you may get no 5G.
“The spectrum is different and doesn’t penetrate as well. But it’s a much broader spectrum and allows for a lot more capacity, as I understand it, so I guess there’s always tradeoffs.”
According to the Verizon website, 5G runs on a higher frequency than 4G, which provides users with a much larger bandwidth.
“That means in a world where everyone is using data with unlimited plans, Verizon can support their users without any of them losing service,” the website says. “With faster downloads and streams than the previous 4G LTE experience, you can stream movies, music and more without worrying about service interruptions.”
Beyond the current service issues, Wiggins said county officials would like to have more coverage in general. As more people abandon landlines entirely, or experience interruptions in those services, availability of cellular service can sometimes be a matter of life and death.
“Get some more towers up,” Wiggins said. “Let’s get our people served out here, because a lot of folks, if a landline goes down, they have no access to emergency services.”
Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, servicing more than 121 million subscribers nationwide as of second quarter 2021, according to multiple online sources. Calls to Verizon’s media relations department seeking comment were not returned before press time Tuesday.