For the last few weeks, many residents in Lakewood have reached out complaining about their Verizon Wireless service.
The users say their service on their Verizon phone worked okay until several weeks ago, and then began losing calls, or having their phone just show SOS, with zero ability to place a call.
In October of 2023, TLS reported that then-Commissioner Vicari met with Verizon executives to discuss the poor cell phone coverage in Lakewood.
Vicari said that included in the discussions were the frequent complaints, especially from customers in Lakewood Township, about poor and spotty cell phone service.
“I have received a number of concerns from Lakewood residents saying they have very poor reception on their Verizon phones,” Vicari said. “Poor cell phone service is not just an inconvenience, it can be a safety and health issue if someone is trying to call 911 and cannot get through.”
Some readers said they reached out, but wasted hours on the phone trying to get through to a rep, or the rep being unable to help them.
In an Ask The Mayor article last year, a reader asked the Mayor about the service issues in Westgate.
Attention Mayor,
I live in Westgate and have very poor Verizon Wireless Phone and Internet Service as well as very poor Optimum Home Wifi.
These are expensive with poor service. The problem is there is very little to no competition.
How can this issue be solved?
The Mayor responded: I know most carriers are always looking for new places to put towers & they almost invariably run into opposition from the folk closest to those proposed towers.
There are other options for Phone & Internet. The cable company can provide hard-wired internet and they also provide mobile phone plans. There are multiple other carriers you could choose from.
Are you having similar issues?
Have had VZW in Lakewood since 2008. Have come to terms that it just doesn’t work anymore. Bh for the most of the day I have WiFi
Yes. Now what??
Did anyone try getting a network extender , did it help ?
Yes. Many of our customers, especially in A Country Place, must resort to it and it works well for them. We recommend getting the Verizon 4G LTE Network Extender ASK-SFE116 on Ebay.
Even with a WiFi extender it does not help.
On hope chapel from 14th street through to new central there is no service.
Verizon really doesn’t care.
Maybe TLS should give up a billboard to make space for a cell tower. L’toeles H’rabim.
If you don’t let them put up towers what do you expect?
It isn’t a tower issue, the carriers rarely own the towers, they lease space and bandwidth on the tower
I’ve identified several large areas with terrible Verizon service around town but there may be more.
1) West of Rt 9 all the way to Hope – from County Line in the North to James in the South;
2) North East of Rt 9 – County Line area until Brook in the East;
3) South East of Rt 9 all the way to GSP – from Cedar Bridge to Oak in the South.
This has been a major issue for some of our medical alert customers who depend on our service for their safety. We have been recommending network boosters when appropriate.
Can your devices use Smart SIMs? They’re great. With the recent AT&T outage they were proven to work extremely well. They work on several major networks and simply switch from one to the other if a network fails or the connection degrades.
I live in close proximity of a tower and am having the same issue.
It’s quite annoying, I can lose service for 20 minutes or more at a time.
– Route 9 between chestnut street and route 70 is a dead zone.
– area of New Hampshire Ave and Ridge Ave is a dead zone
– area of route 70 and New Hampshire Ave is dead zone.
Live areas aren’t much better because service in general is horrible, but those areas are completely dead.
Was just at the Verizon store in the plaza, couple things here.
1) in the cellular tab on the phone there’s an option to use WiFi calling , which will allow reg calls and texts using a WiFi network
2) Verizon has been trying to build a cell tower in the 14th st area but we need the locals to allow it
3) The sales rep recommended calling Verizon and requesting a network extender for free , so after 45 min on the phone and being transferred to technical support , they approved an extender to be shipped free of charge. This is after a week of basically only SOS mode .
They did say they can see the service in the area ( 14th st) is low.
I honestly had Verizon for years and switched to T mobile and the service isn’t only much cheaper as in less fees etc but way better service here in Lakewood and much faster data
Verizon claims software update failed. Indicates to me no test environment. Bad practice. We suffer.
Yes have i have verizon and frequently have service issues but its usually in specific locations.
My wife however statrted reporting as of a week ago, that many times her phone simply says “no Sim” and doesnt work…
Area of R. Gissinger Shul, terrible lately.
Smart Phone would work better then Flip Phone IMO