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Reception is a funny thing, wouldn’t you agree? Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. There are dead zones in your house that just will not let a phone call come through. When you’re driving along, you sometimes find that your phone drops a call and you hope and pray your car doesn’t decide to break down right then. Why is that?

Cell reception is based on the tower, coverage area, overlapping cells, transmission power and signal strength. Combined, these create reception and the problems that come with it. It’s better to understand why your phone isn’t working than it is to just shrug it off or throw the phone across the room. If you’re ambitious, you may even figure out a way to solve the problem.

It Starts With a Tower

To communicate, cell phones transmit and receive signals through towers set up with a range of about 10 square miles. The FCC limits every provider to a specified number of frequencies it may use in each city. A frequency is reused and essentially counts for one person. Each time a user nears another tower; their count is transferred to that tower.

These towers are the power and for the greater distance it has to cover, the lower the power it has to provide for each user. It’s essentially like filling cups with water and transferring the water to different cups. The more you fill one cup, the less room it has for new water, but once you transfer some water to a different cup, the more room the original cup has for new water.

Why Did I Drop My Call?

If you tie a rope around your waist and tie the rope to a pole and then walk away, you’ll only get so far before you’ve reached the end of your rope. The same works for a signal. The further you move from a tower the further you move from coverage. Eventually, you hit the end of your rope, you take another step and you’ve dropped your call.

Carriers try lowering transmission power by using a network of cells; however, idyllically a network of cells would be hexagonal and cover a grid perfectly. Such is not the case. Cells are round and so gaps in coverage occur when there is minimum or no intersection between cells. Carriers create more towers to sustain the user load, but if a user does happen to move outside the boundaries of their coverage area, their call is dropped and reception is lost.

So That’s The Only Reason?

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only reason for dropped calls. Transmission power plays a part in reception. Cell phones user low-power transmitters and the station transmits at minimal power to keep within the cell range.

The more users there are the more towers that need to be positioned. Therefore, less power is needed to cover a location. As a tradeoff, weaker signals aren’t capable of penetrating buildings. This may help you understand why you need to stand at your front door to “catch a signal.”

You can avoid reception problems by purchasing a high quality cell phone with good network coverage. Shop online to find the best cell phone for the area where you live.