There are five words you’ve probably said or have been asked while at the Nebraska Medical Center and UNMC campus in Omaha or at Nebraska Medicine-Bellevue — “Can you hear me now?” Or maybe that email or text isn’t being sent or received.
The spotty service and dropped calls could be attributed to a particular cellular phone network provider. People who have cell phones through AT&T and Sprint have been experiencing poor reception around campus.
Verizon has placed infrastructure on the main medical center campus and the Bellevue campus and is currently the most reliable cell service to use at these locations. AT&T has installed infrastructure at Bellevue, but it’s currently not active. Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular have not installed any additional infrastructure to improve service on campus yet.
“There is a Nebraska Medicine and UNMC steering team — in conjunction with DAS Advisers consulting group — that is working hard to convince the other carriers to invest in our campus, or nearby free-standing towers, to improve their service,” said Marc Ferguson, IT operations executive director.
The team is aggressively pursuing best efforts to induce these carriers to make the necessary changes to enable reliable service from all carriers on the Omaha campus, but ultimately the timing and priority is set by the carriers themselves. While negotiations are taking place with the carriers please be advised that the most reliable (and thus the safest) cell service to use on UNMC’s main campus is Verizon.
Verizon is bad in a lot of places as well. Most of our faculty have to roam the hallways because they can't get reception in their offices.
It is unfortunate when the university of Nebraska network decides to side with 3rd party vendors that opt to charge exorbident amounts to cell phone companies for placing cell phone towers and repeaters on university locations. This would appear to be a self inflicted wound in many respects…. unfortunate