Re: Weird Happenings

RVer Don wrote:
Sometimes when my cell phone is called the caller will immediately get the voice mail message. The phone will ring once but there will be no one there when answered. I was told this might be because the phone was in a weak signal area. So I tried calling it at home from my landline. The signal there is four or five bars.

Sometimes it will ring more than once and can be answered before going to voice mail. Other times, with the cell phone in the same exact place, it will immediately go to voice mail. It will ring but one time only and there is no chance to answer the call before it goes to voice mail. Anybody got any idea what's going on here? 

From what you describe, one of two things might be happening:

1. There's enough signal attenuation inside your house that although you're getting a good signal strength FROM the tower, the signal strength TO the tower isn't so great. Wireless phones must work both ways, and sometimes it's possible for your phone to "hear" the cell tower just fine, but the cell site can't receive your phone's much weaker signal quite as well. You might have to reposition the phone, say, nearer to a window.

2. The network in your area is congested. If enough people are yapping on their cell phones at the same time near where you live, the "noise floor" increases, and it gets harder for the cell site to distinguish which phones are transmitting. An overloaded cell network would mean that an incoming call might roll to voicemail before your phone has a chance to ring. Are there particular tiems of the day or night when this happens more often? If you're getting more blocked calls in the evening and on the weekends, then network congestion is probably the cause (people talk more on cell phones during off-peak times, when it's "free").

A less likely, but still plausible, cause is that your phone could be performing poorly either because it's old or defective. It wouldn't hurt to take the phone into a store and get it checked out. Back in the day, cellular companies would tell their customers (correctly) that cell phones can "drift" over time and need to be adjusted, and bringing the phone back to the shop for "re-tuning" was a recommended annual ritual. Nowadays, cell providers largely expect the phones to be disposable, and assume that most people will just toss their phone in the trash and get a new one about every two years, or as soon as it starts to act up on them.




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