Menino maps cellphone gaps

It is an aggravation of the age, the conversation-stopper that seems always to include the phrase, ''You're breaking up." Cellphone dead zones have irritated many, but recently they have really annoyed Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who says his cellphone conversations get cut off day after day as he traverses the city's neighborhoods.

The low-tech, urban mechanic mayor is fed up, he says, and there's no acceptable explanation why a city like Boston should have so many pockets of fog.

''Why can't we have better service?" he fumed yesterday on a drive through the city to measure reception. ''It gets garbled, and you lose the person. It's worse than ever. You drive around the city, and you're talking on the phone. People are calling you and you're just losing them."

Has he missed important calls?

''How would I know?" Menino says.

On his trip yesterday, the mayor and an aide monitored reception of service provided by Nextel, Verizon, and Cingular, but Menino focused primarily on Nextel, because it provides phones to more than 1,400 city employees, along with a handful of Blackberry handheld computers that have a cellphone function.

Menino has been complaining privately to Nextel, which has responded by putting up temporary antennas, called COWS (Communication on Wheels), at strategic locations like Franklin Park, where coverage is particularly weak. The company is also adding a cell site at the Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

But the mayor says coverage is still too spotty. And, with enough memories of places where he's lost reception to make a map in his brain, he toured several city neighborhoods, noting each time his phone lost its signal. Menino argued that reception is the worst in predominantly minority neighborhoods.

''They don't see an economic benefit out here," he said of the phone companies as his driver navigated his Ford Expedition up Blue Hill Avenue.

The mayor monitored reception by watching a line on his phone's display screen that grows longer when signal strength is strong and gets shorter when it is weak. It disappeared as his sport utility vehicle traveled into Roxbury, around Seaver Street and Franklin Park. Then came American Legion Highway in Roslindale, where the phone picked up nothing for blocks. Hyde Park Avenue wasn't much better.

The signal mark returned on River Street in Mattapan, but when his driver ventured into Dorchester, around Washington Street, reception started to wane. Even on tony Ashmont Hill, among the brightly painted Victorian houses and freshly mowed lawns, coverage was nil.

''When I'm out there, I hear a lot of complaints," he said. ''They're not keeping up with the demand; they don't have enough antennas. More and more people are complaining about their service."

Service improved as the SUV returned downtown, though there were dead pockets in the South End and along Storrow Drive at Beacon Hill. The signal disappeared again at Charles Circle, but jumped again as the vehicle made its way up Cambridge Street toward City Hall.

According to records kept by the city's Inspectional Services Department, Boston has some 600 cell sites, towers or buildings where antennas are attached. Nevertheless, there are blocks and blocks of dead spots.

Cellphone signals weaken the farther the phone is from an antenna, and each antenna can handle only so many signals, so companies must install more antennas to keep up with increasing numbers of phones. Dead spots can also occur in low spots in the topography or when large buildings block signals. None of the cellphone companies would say how many sites they own or have access to, saying they don't want their competitors to know.

Nextel spokesman John Redman said his company is eager to work with Menino to improve coverage.

''We have been proactively working with city agencies to expand our coverage in Boston and would welcome support from the mayor's office to get this done," he said. He said the company has been seeking the city's help in identifying areas that most need coverage. The city must also grant permits for new antenna sites.

Michael Galvin, the city's chief of basic services, has appointed a committee to look for the best places to locate new antennas. The tangle of communications equipment outside Boston police headquarters may interfere with wireless phone signals, he said. And officials looking for a new place to put a tower in Roxbury have to avoid a wireless signal currently beamed toward Roxbury from a tower in the Blue Hills, he said. ''Siting is a difficult thing," said Galvin.

Nextel's Redman said keeping coverage complete is not easy in a crowded urban setting, and the company attempts to install new antennas to keep adequate coverage.

''We take pride in our network," he said. ''As we identify areas where coverage is needed because of growth, a new building goes up that blocks a tower."

Dead spots in Roxbury, Roslindale, Hyde Park, and Dorchester do not mean the company is avoiding minority areas, he said.

''We want to provide coverage regardless of where the neighborhood happens to be located," he said. ''The demographics of cellphone use go from the wealthy right down to young kids. We build out based on demand and usage. We have heavy usage in a lot of the neighborhoods that may have been identified as the poorer or not as attractive ones. These are some of the areas we're looking to expand the network coverage."

Though Menino insisted that service is getting worse, a Verizon spokesman said the number of complaints fielded by the company has declined.

''I would say they [complaints] have decreased as the infrastructure increases," said Verizon's David Thomson. ''At least 90 percent of our budget goes to capacity, insuring the system will live up to customers' expectations."

Whether the mayor or the companies are right is hard to know. No city or state agency regulates cellular service.

The Federal Communications Commission oversees the industry and logs complaints, but they are not broken down by city, state, or region. According to the agency's most recent quarterly report, issued in March, cellular complaints nationwide dropped from 9,120 to 4,369.

The agency received 606 complaints concerning the quality of service, including dead spots and dropped calls.