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About The Bay: Spotty Cell Service Ironic At AT&T Park

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) - Complaints are being heard loud and clear at AT&T Park, the San Francisco ballpark named, as any consumer knows, for a phone company. The problem? Customers say they're striking out when it comes to clear and reliable cell phone service.

KCBS' Mike Sugerman Reports:

Giants fans reported a variety of problems when KCBS' Mike Sugerman took to the stands to gauge customer satisfaction during his travels.  Among the complaints were dropped calls, not being able to hear the person on the other end of the line, and failed photo uploads.

After AT&T spent $52 million for naming rights, it stands to reason that they'd want their own product to work well at the ballpark, Sugerman suggested.

"It's like the Bay Bridge," reasoned AT&T spokesman John Britton. "There is congestion, when you put 42,000 people in a relatively small area and they all start competing for those lanes, the wireless highway gets congested."

And, Britton pointed out that considering how popular the Giants have been following an historic World Series win, there probably isn't a hotter hot spot for cell service on earth than AT&T Park.

"Opening Day this year was record demand on the network," he explained. "42,000 people all snapping memories as that banner goes up and panning around taking pictures of each other, trying to upload them quickly to Facebook and other places."

"There are 17 different sectors the ballpark's been broken into for our wireless network and there are 119 antennas inside that small area, feeding it," he went on to outline coverage in the ballpark. "We found a few that are overlapping, there are some hot spots, there's some interference. We're working on it, we're going to take care of that."

(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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