Why does my cell phone drop calls

There are a number of reasons your cell phone will drop a call. One of the very basic reasons is that you are or have moved to far away from a cell tower. Tall buildings, mountains, thick foliage, and of course bad weather can all contribute to a call being dropped.

What about when I’m driving on a beautiful sunny day in the middle of the desert and my phone decides it’s tired and drops the call. All of the major carriers are always looking to overlap their coverage areas, but unfortunately there is a limit to the networks architecture therefore you will sometimes run into an areas called “dead spots”. Dead spots occur where there is no antenna available to continue to transmit the signal.(duh)

Another reason that’s not so “captain obvious” are that solar flares can contribute to a number of dropped calls particularly during sunrise and sunset. This is because when cell towers are erected they are positioned to face east and west to communicate across the country. A call can be dropped without warning even if you have full bars of signal.

Tips for limiting dropping calls:

Keep your finger away from the antenna while talking on the phone.
Use an antenna booster (they are usually good for a bar or two).
Make sure your phone has the latest roaming database uploaded.
Switch to the carrier who has better coverage for your area.
Purchase a powered amplifier to boost your signal to the maximum allowed by the FCC.

Comments on this Post

gameel @ Dec 6, 09 5:01 PM

please i have the project of performance of call drop in GSM please help me

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User (208877) @ Dec 25, 08 10:43 PM

Hi my lg rumor always says searching for signal. Menawhile my sister has the exact same phone and shes beside me and hers doenst say that. It wont allow to recieve incoming calls it will say searching for signal>> Can you help me ??

User (204173) @ Nov 15, 08 6:18 AM

my cell phone keeps dropping my phone calls every 16 minutes when it was working just fine a few weeks ago. i already called the customer service so they could update it and so the same problem wont occur again. the bad thing about it is that its still dropping my calls even though my plan is to its max and i already paid the bills. i have no idea whats wrong with my phone but it needs to be fixed. the customer service said that its either the sim card needs to be changed or i dont have signal in my area when my signal is just fine in my area. what should i do????

User (200632) @ Oct 6, 08 11:21 AM

My daughter and I have 3 cell phones between us. Two are from MetroPCS and one is Nokia. Inside our home, we never experienced dropped calls while using these phones, but lately (over the last several months), we are continually having an EXCESSIVE amount of dropped calls on ALL the cell phones (every call, every day) unless we stand in an open window or go outside. My daughter traded one phone in for a new one, thinking this would solve the problem, but the new phone continues to drop excessive calls while she's at home (we don't have this trouble when away from home). Has something been brought into our home that could be causing this? If so, what should we look for? By the way, I have a stalker (who's technically savvy). He keeps finding ways to break into my home then proceeds to steal and vandalize. Could he have planted something inside my home that's causing this cell phone trouble? Whatever the case, what should we look for?

User (190209) @ Aug 6, 08 11:48 PM

What about during natural emergencies? Lets say, you are in an urban area, no dead spots and no towers have fallen, yet efforts to communicate with loved ones fails. Are we "clogging" the air waves with too much data? Or are the frequencies then reserved for emergency responders, thus limiting our calls?

User (179089) @ Jul 10, 08 4:05 AM

interesting news

User (87586) @ Nov 11, 05 12:00 AM

Joe- Thanks for the article. I'm tired of losing calls and was wondering, how can I make sure my phone has the latest roaming database uploaded?

jkdog @ Nov 11, 05 12:00 AM

Stacey- All you have to do is contact customer service and they will walk you through the steps to update the database. Depending on the carrier you may be required to enter a code and press send. That being said you may want to call customer service from a landline, or a friends cell phone.