The Mayor of Salisbury knows what it’s like to have reduced cellular coverage.
His community is one of the rural areas in New Brunswick affected.
“We’ve actually seen a continued degradation in service in our community get worse,” Robert Campbell said.
Ten new Bell cellular sites in the province were announced this week, but Salisbury wasn’t one of them.
“We applaud any investment by government or private providers. We welcome it, especially since providers keep increasingly stating that the network’s congested, and it’s becoming more and more of an issue. So, we obviously welcome the fact that this(adding cellular sites) is going on, but we obviously still have our own challenges within our own community that we’re facing,” Campbell added.
He says safety is one of the main reasons good cellular service is so important, but there are also the costs associated with cellular services and paying for something you’re not receiving.
It’s also impacting the community from an economic development perspective, “I had tourists in our community who had asked me some questions on some tourism assets for the province. I went to show it to them on my phone, and unfortunately, I could not connect,” Campbell stated.
He stressed it’s imperative that this is corrected.
The communities chosen for the new ten Bell cellular sites are Oak Hill, Hibernia Heights (Saint John County), Upham, South St. Norbert, Grand River, Harcourt, Bettsburg, McGraw Brook, Riceville (Madawaska County) and Saint-Quentin. Work is expected to begin next year and be completed by mid-2027.
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“The mapping coverage that they used to make the decisions on, where the cell phone towers needed to be placed, we don’t believe is correct, or reflective of the true state in the province. For instance, the mapping that was done by the province indicated that we had great coverage within our community, which the residents can tell you is not the case,” Campbell explained.
A Rogers tower was erected in Salisbury, but Campbell says they are still waiting for services to go live.
