HANOVER — Following a visit earlier this week to see his 101-year-old grandmother who lives in a nearby assisted living facility, Nolan Love made a stop in downtown Hanover to get some food.
Love had just three or four bars of 3G cell service — which proved spotty as he attempted to pay for his parking on Main Street in front of the Nugget Theater. He spent eight minutes finagling before the payment went through.
“That’s kind of unacceptable for a college town,” Love said.
Unreliable cell service can make everyday tasks, such as paying for parking, a challenge in Hanover (though the town also accepts cash and cards as options for parking payments). While weak reception is the norm in many rural corners of the Upper Valley, as Love suggested, such difficulties seem out of keeping with Hanover’s Ivy League stature.
Hanover and Dartmouth College have made efforts to expand Wi-Fi in recent years, but a broader fix such as the installation of a new, taller cellphone tower remains out of reach.
“It’s basically impossible to get cell service,” said Marga Camara, 30, a student at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. She often has no signal with her carrier T-Mobile, but had three bars along Main Street on Monday.
While Camara spends the majority of her time along Tuck Mall, on the western side of campus, people in other areas have similar issues.
Jennifer Opalinski, 56, of Franconia, N.H., recently switched from Verizon to Spectrum, which uses Verizon’s towers but has lower data priority.
Since switching, she’s experienced poorer coverage in Hanover, which she often visits when she’s in the Upper Valley, where she works as the director of adult education at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center, she said.
“It just depends where I am,” Opalinski said. Even though her phone might show two bars of 5G, “that can be spotty depending on what you want to do. So, probably fine for a cell call (or) a quick email,” she said.
Town officials are aware of the problem; it affects them, too.
“I live in Hanover,” said Town Manager Robert Houseman, who lives on the west end of town near the intersection of Greensboro Road and Great Hollow Road. “I have no coverage in my house, and I have no coverage in portions of downtown.”
The closest cell tower is in the tall, white steeple of the Church of Christ on College Street, which sits 70 feet in the air, Houseman said.
This is, however, too short as the frequencies are blocked by buildings, thereby creating “shadows” that lack coverage, he added.
The other towers that furnish 5G coverage are at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and on Moose Mountain, which are, respectively, about 4.5 and 6 miles away, Houseman said.
The “G” refers to the generation of cell phone coverage, which began in 1973 with 1G and has since improved data speeds significantly, according to the European Parliamentary Research Service.
But increasing Gs also has increased signal frequencies, which lowers the distance signals can travel, meaning the coverage radius has gotten smaller over time, Houseman added.
The town is dependent upon private companies “to build and support wireless communications,” Houseman said. And the town only has control over its own property, although it’s working with Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Health, Houseman said.
“We are doing everything we can to remedy the situation,” Houseman said.
The symbolic heart of Hanover, the Dartmouth Green, was a cellular dead zone prior to 2022, when the college rolled out Wi-Fi to the area that works as cell service.
The town has installed antennas on the same network that Dartmouth used on the Green to extend internet capabilities, Houseman said. The antennas allow for Wi-Fi calling and are located at the Town Hall, Lou’s Bakery and Bank of America, he added.
Houseman asked Verizon to put a Cellular On Wheels, or a C.O.W., in the town’s parking garage, he said. But as they’re generally used for emergency situations such as natural disasters, Verizon didn’t go for it.
“We are pursuing all options,” Houseman said.
In July, Houseman asked three tower companies to analyze the the cell gaps in town, and how to fix them.
One company completed an assessment at its own cost, Houseman said. The assessment identified a preferred location for a future tower, he said, but declined to say where.
As talks continue with tower companies, the ball is in the court of the service providers, Houseman said.
“Now I gotta get the providers to say yes,” he said.
Representatives from Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.