These U.S. states and cities have the most cellular dead zones. How does your state rank?
Cell service in the U.S. isn't the same as you travel from state to state. Some states have more dead zones than others and researchers at Holafly went through more than 30,000 complaints made to the DeadCellZones.com website to calculate a specific metric. The researchers computed how many cell signal complaints were made per one million residents allowing lists to be made showing the cities, states, and zip codes that have the most cell coverage issues.
Based on the data, Cincinnati, Ohio is the city with the most dead zone complaints with 534 made per one million people. The 45255 ZIP Code, which covers Cincinnati, has the largest number of dead cell zones in the country with 6570 reports per million people. Hawaii is the state with the most complaints per million people (282) followed by Maine (264) and Vermont (252).
Cellular dead zone complaints for each state per one million residents. | Image credit-Holafly
Part of the issue in Hawaii is that some residents don't want cell towers built in the state. Several came out to protest a plan by AT&T to construct a new cell tower in Hawaii. John Sargent, a resident of Kauai, told Civil Beat in 2023, "I don’t care if I have reception. In fact, I don’t actually want it." Sometimes you get what what you want.
"A number of Hawaiian families who go back 10 generations live out here. The ocean is their refrigerator, the coral is their garden and they take care of it. They’re very aligned with the land and the sea and they want to protect it. They don’t necessarily want it modernized. So to put in a tower that is 100 feet higher than any other building out here is just absurd."-Terri Tico, local lawyer
According to Holafly, dead zone complaints recently set a record in 2023 with problems affecting one out of every 10 calls. But last year that number declined as 5G technology has helped reduce problem calls. With upgrades to 4G LTE and 5G networks such as carrier aggregation, which combines multiple frequency bands to expand the capacity and increase network speed, "Now we are able to take that two-lane highway and make it a 20 lane," said Verizon spokesperson Andrew Testa in 2023.
U.S. cities with the most cellular dead zone complaints per one million residents. | Image credit-Holafly
We gave you the worst city (Cincinnati) and state (Hawaii) for cellular service in the U.S. last year, so it is only fair that we tell you the state with the fewest number of dead zone complaints per million residents. That would be South Dakota which had only 41 complaints per million residents made to DeadCellZones.com.
Among the top 20 cities with the most complaints, seven are in California and five are in Colorado. The worst zip code in California for cell signal dead zones is El Segundo 90245 which had 1,158 complaints per million people. Half Moon Bay, zip code 94019, was next in the state with 969 complaints per million residents.
The local planning commission in Half Moon Bay announced a plan to replace a 50-foot AT&T cell tower with a 75-foot cell tower at a nearby high school. The new tower would be built "farther away from residential and high-use student areas." Hopefully, this will reduce the number of complaints about dead zones in the area.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: