Game days, no matter what university you attend, seem to have a multitude of things in common. The bleachers are filled with fans, alumni and students decked out in their school’s colors, faces painted, stomachs full from their tailgates. There is no football pride stronger than those of the schools in the Southeastern Conference, and there is no greater moment in a football game than when our Tigers make it to the end zone.
But there is also no bigger of a bother than when you leave a game early and try to check your ESPN app for updates, but it fails, or when you leave your friend’s side for two minutes, only to lose him or her because your calls won’t go through.
Fans pour into Columbia for home games, and with joining the SEC, MU can expect more fans of the opposing team to travel here than ever before, per SEC tradition. The large number of people crowding into the town results in poor cellphone signals because the campus becomes a sort of “dead zone,” meaning there is faulty wireless network coverage everywhere.
Cities and towns are divided into overlapping “cells” controlled by base stations, or “cell sites,” that transfer calls to different networks. The productivity of these networks is determined by the radio waves that travel the distance from the phone to the closest base cell site. Not only do they encounter geographical obstacles, though Missouri’s small hills and flat grassland don’t prove to be too much of a challenge, but other electrical signals can interfere as well.
Things get worse the closer you are to the stadium, which could be because the stadium itself is an obstacle that blocks the communication signal from the phone to the tower. The Federal Communications Commission said this is one of the largest reasons for “dead zones,” and logically and understandably, that makes sense to me.
Large buildings, like stadiums, are often constructed with a large amount of metal. Metal is one of the strongest conductors and can directly affect the frequency of radio waves. Metal attracts the signals service providers transmit, which means they never reach your phone. Certain companies claim sheet metal can deflect the signals, and that with the right products and a well-thought-out plan, the loss of cellphone reception will not be an issue.
In 2010, Verizon Wireless set up three temporary cell sites near the University of Michigan for the university’s football season. Equipment upgrades were also made at the cell towers, which resulted in an 11 percent increase of ability to handle calls and an 87 percent increase in their ability to handle data traffic. It was a win-win situation: Fans were able to access Internet and phone service while enjoying the game, and the company won over customers with its reliability.
AT&T also played a part by constructing a mobile cell site and adding what it calls “new layers of frequency,” or “carriers,” to raise 3G capacity at nearby cell sites.
I am unsure how easy it would be to correct the issue here in Columbia, but I urge local telephone companies to come up with some sort of solution. It would greatly reduce the stress of finding friends in a crowd of thousands of people and make game days even more enjoyable.
