CBS to join Holyrood’s campaign for better cellular service

By Craig Westcott/September 9, 2022

CBS councillor-at-large Paul Connors is asking his colleagues to join the Town of Holyrood in its fight for better cellular service in the region.

“Recently our local newspaper, The Shoreline, ran an article where the mayor of Holyrood, Gary Goobie, spoke about an old problem, he called it, that is constantly getting worse,” said Connors. “And I can’t agree with him more.”

Connors said he can’t speak for the east end of CBS, but can confidently attest that from Kitty Ade’s Turn in Long Pond to Seal Cove the quality of cellular service is deteriorating.

“It’s basically a lack of service,” said Connors. “Both voice and data in the area is either very poor or non-existent at all, at times. Even late at night when there shouldn’t be any traffic on the bandwidth, the service is still pretty poor. As the second largest municipality in Newfoundland with 27,000 people and still growing, this to me is ridiculous. On side roads up in that area you can’t get service. It’s non-existent. Driving along Route 60 there are dropped calls all over the place. If you’re (standing) next to a building trying to get Wi-Fi, it’s not there, inside or outside the building. And this is all because of a poor network. They put a new tower up next to the arena, which was supposedly going to improve this, but to be honest I haven’t seen any improvement.”

Connors said from what he understands, the cellular provider is not planning on completing any upgrades to the service until 2023 or later.

“If people have to keep going with this poor service throughout the west end of the town and probably the east end of the town as well, it’s not right,” Connors added. “People are paying good money for this and they deserve a good service.”

Connors asked all residents to go to their particular service provider’s website and complete a complaint message. “Because they do, I’m told, check their stats on a regular basis to see where all the complaints are coming from,” Connors said. “The Town of Holyrood is doing this, and I think the residents of Conception Bay South should do it as well. We need them to hear loud and clear that the service that they are providing is not adequate for a population our size, and hopefully the squeaky wheel will get something done before 2023 or later.”

Connors asked his colleagues to join Holyrood in coordinating a face-to-face meeting with representatives of the cellular companies to register their complaints.

“We need network improvements, and we basically need them now,” Connors said. 

Mayor Darrin Bent acknowledged Connors’ gripe.

“This is a complaint that you would expect to hear from a much more rural area of the province, not from a community that is the second largest in the province and that is very close to the largest centre,” the mayor said. “There are drop-outs from one end of the town to the other. It’s not a west end, or a centre of town thing, it’s not an east end thing. There are pockets all through the town where people are having trouble.”

Bent too encouraged residents to register their concerns with the companies. He also asked staff to arrange a meeting with the service providers “to see if we can get service improved for the residents of Conception Bay South.”