Bell Ticket 3000250 Saga

In late-July, I called Bell Canada to complain about my wireless services.  I have a BlackBerry cell phone and a mobile internet stick, both with Bell.  After the G8 and G20 summits, I noticed a considerable drop in the quality of my service.  Prior to these events, I generally got around 2 bars or more of signal strength.  Since those events, my service dropped to 1 bar of signal strength, at best.

I could no longer hold a conversation with someone without the call dropping.  Calls would go directly to voice mail, without the phone ringing.  I could rarely get on to the internet.  If I did, my connection would drop after 5 minutes or so.  It got so bad, we were forced to get a landline.  $450+ a year wasted.

The service was so deplorable I called Bell to complain and was given ticket number 3000250.  To their credit, the people I spoke with were friendly and did seem to try to help.  However, it took numerous phone calls and months of waiting to get an answer as to what was happening with Bell service in the area.

Bell admitted that due to the proximity of our area's cell towers and Base Borden (a main security staging area for the G8 and G20 summits) that cell signals were jammed in the area for a week.  However, service was supposed to be back to normal.  I told them that service had not resumed to the pre-summit level.  Their technicians looked into it further.  I had to call from my location to triangulate which towers impacted my location.  More phone calls, more waiting.

Their final answer is this: the Bell network in our area has been verified to be in working condition.  We are in what is referred to as a Marginal Coverage Area (MCA).  Bell customers in our area can "expect" dropped calls, missed calls, delayed SMS messages, signal fluctuation, etc.  In order to rectify this situation, two new towers would have to be built.  At this time, there is no estimate for when this would happen.

My final answer is this: coverage maps on provider websites are useless.  If you need a mobile internet stick or cell phone plan, go with Rogers.  I'll explain why in tomorrow's post.