Brad Feld

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Verizon – I Can’t Hear You Now

Jun 15, 2017
Category Technology

My cell phone experience is so fucking miserable. As I drove home last night and tried to have a conversation, I had five drops during a 30-minute drive from downtown Boulder to my house on the edge of Boulder and Longmont. When I drive into my office this morning, on exactly the same route, I expect I’ll have five drops at exactly the same spots.

This happens every day I drive between my house and my office. There is a dead spot at the corner of St. Vrain and 36. There is another dead spot on Broadway just across the street from Amante. There are four more that I can name (one on St. Vrain, one on 36, and one on Broadway), but I don’t want to give away all of Verizon’s secrets.

It’s 2017. I think my Cellular One experience in Boston in the mid-1990s was better.

For a few weeks, I thought maybe it was that Verizon knew I supported Net Neutrality and was fucking with me. But I’m not a conspiracy theorist, so this is my inner sarcasm rising to the surface.

I sent out an email asking a bunch of local friends what they used and how they liked it. I got general bitching about Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile, so there wasn’t a clear answer.

So, I’ve decided to go on my own exploration. I’m going to get each service and try them for a week. I’ll put up with the nightmare of porting my phone number around, which I expect will end in tears, but fortunately, I use Google Authenticator instead of SMS for two-factor authentication, so at least that won’t be a miserable pain in the ass.

Or maybe I’ll just get a second iPhone, a new phone number, and use that as the test device. That sounds safer, but now I’ve got to figure out how to sync two different iPhones to one account so that the images on both iPhones is the same. A quick Google search does not reveal the magic trick, so I’m sure that will be entertaining.

Do I sound like I’m at the end of my rope on this issue? Please don’t ask me about CenturyLink and the Internet non-service at my house.