Cell Service Fades in Rural New Canaan
Friday, February 18th, 2011
Geoffrey Pickard spent $200 on a booster to improve cell phone reception at his home.
Geoffrey Pickard lives about a mile from downtown New Canaan and has a hard time making a call on his cell phone from the comfort of his home. Pickard, who lives on Oenoke Ridge Road, had to purchase a booster unit from Verizon to expand the signal so that he can use his Blackberry while at home. Without it, he has to rely on his landline phone to reach out and touch someone.
“New Canaan is a very affluent town, and we’re within 40 minutes of one of the biggest cities in the world – and we have rinky-dink cell phone service,” he said. The inability to make connections is why Pickard volunteered to create a survey asking town residents what they think. So far, residents are having a hard time using their cell phones outside of the downtown business district. Pickard said there’s virtually no reliable service north of downtown, moderate service west and south of the town’s center and what he considers average service east of downtown. Eighty-nine percent of the respondents have said that people want better service.
The solution would be to have more cell service towers. T-Mobile plans to build a tower at the Silver Hill Hospital grounds. Two other sites are also in the works, Pickard said, though he did not discuss where those structures could be built because no formal application has been made to the Connecticut Siting Council.
Having better phone service in town is important for safety as well as general communication, especially in the event of a power outage from a storm or a vehicle accident with injuries. “If the town of New Canaan wants 21st-century cell phone communications and all that it offers … they have to put up more towers,” he said. “If not, signal improvement will not advance very far.”
