“Can You Hear Me Now?”: Why Is Cell Phone Call Quality So Bad?

These days, we have smartphones that we can use to literally open doors and turn off lights in our homes from anywhere in the world. There are millions of apps that can help us accomplish countless tasks, some of which may blow your mind.

Yet cell phone call quality remains very average at best.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been talking to someone on my smartphone or attempting to hear someone talking to me on theirs, and I just can’t understand what they are saying. I listen closely. I press the phone up to my ear to the point where it hurts. I walk around and go outside. It still doesn’t help.

Even more frustration comes with inexplicable dropped calls. Cell towers are everywhere. I don’t live in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t talk to people in extremely rural places, either.

In 2014, why is cell phone technology this bad? I’m not talking about mobile technology in general. I’m referring to the quality of a phone call involving one or more cell phones. It absolutely baffles me that analog communication from 40 years ago is probably a hundred times better than the digital nature of a call transmitted via cell towers. Some people sound like robots, while others simply get hung up on because of a poor connection.

While technology continues to astound us in so many ways, some aspects of communication remain completely stagnant. All I want to do is carry on a meaningful conversation with a close friend or family member without having to repeat myself or ask the other person to do so. I am begging someone out there to improve this. Otherwise, we might as well reinstall all of the old landline phones in our homes – and put all those payphones back in malls across the country.