Here’s the NYC borough with the worst cellphone service: ‘We’re stuck in a time warp!’
Manhattan is the worst borough in the city for dropped cellphone calls, according to a new survey — which sadly was news to absolutely nobody in Gotham.
“In New York, we are stuck in some kind of time warp,” griped 57-year-old Manhattan dogwalker Sonya Burns to The Post on Tuesday.
“It shouldn’t be like that in 2024. The whole world has stepped up, and Manhattan hasn’t, I don’t really understand,” she said. “New York needs to get more current. You know, 2024!”
About 60% of Manhattanites said they frequently experience dropped calls, according to the recent survey conducted by the polling company HarrisX.
In Brooklyn, 48% of respondents said they often experienced poor service and dropped calls, followed by the Bronx with 44%, Queens with 38%, and Staten Island with 30%.
Some people said they often resort to FaceTime calls in hopes of better service.
“I get a lot of dropped calls in Brooklyn, maybe like once a week. I usually do FaceTime calls to avoid regular calls,” said 27-year-old Aafreen Saundh, a communications major at Pratt Institute.
The culprit to Manhattan’s cell service issues is likely the very thing that makes Manhattan Manhattan — its skyscrapers.
“Radio frequencies that the carriers use don’t work well with buildings. These frequencies don’t interact well with steel or concrete, which can block signals,” said Iain Gillott, a technical adviser at the Wireless Infrastructure Association, to amNY.
“And of course, skyscrapers in New York are built of concrete and steel,” he said.
Cell network antennae also are generally mounted on the tops of towers throughout the city, meaning the signals they’re transmitting can have trouble making their way to phones dozens of stories down in the hands of walking or driving New Yorkers, Gillott explained.
“That signal bounces around in the concrete canyons in Manhattan — it can bounce off windows and get blocked by the buildings, which causes interference,” he said.
For some New Yorkers, connection troubles have been a problem for business.
“Sometimes the connection is really bad,” said a worker at Rosella’s Pizzeria in downtown Manhattan. “I don’t hear when they say numbers, especially numbers of cards. I need to always ask them to repeat.”
But not everybody experiences the problem, even if they wish they would.
“It never drops, I wish it would drop,” said 49-year-old elevator mechanic Chris Byne. “I hate the phone.”
