It’s strange to have bad cell phone service in a place like Manhattan, a place that is packed with cell towers and technology and that is about as far from a rural, mountainous area as you can get. But I struggle to get a signal in my office in the middle of the city, and beyond—my phone calls at my house in Beacon, NY, frequently turn garbled and disconnect; I often can’t access data while a passenger in a car traveling around the suburbs of New York City, one of the most densely populated regions in the country; and trying to talk to my parents on their cellphones at their home in suburban Boston is like a version of the ‘Can you hear me now?’ commercials, except you replace the actors with Boomers and the answer is always ‘No.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] I’m not the only one with complaints: on average, between April and June of 2023, U.S.