Cell phone reception may affect state House candidate

Coffee Talk loves to look for irony wherever it can find it.

This week, it happens that some of the people who complain about the abundance of cell phone towers in Tampa are likely doing so on wireless phones with much clearer reception than in other parts of the country.

In fact, J.D. Power and Associates recognized the Tampa Bay area as having the fewest cell phone problems among 27 national markets studied. This market posted only five problems per 100 calls in the 2010 Wireless Call Quality Performance Study, based on responses from more than 26,000 customers surveyed in the first half of the year.

J.D. Power, based in Westlake Village, Calif., considered seven problem areas impacting carrier performance — dropped calls, static/interference, failed call connection on the first try, voice distortion, echoes, no immediate voicemail notification and no immediate text message notification. The survey ranks Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile as the best providers in the Southeast.

Given the fact that wireless works so well in the Bay area, especially with so many people talking, texting and playing games on their smartphones, it's a bit ironic that so many would also complain about the location of the towers that enable such clarity. For example, parents at several schools in Hillsborough County have vowed to fight Tampa attorney Stacy Frank's campaign for the state House District 57 seat in the Nov. 2 election on just that issue.

Frank, who is running as a Democrat against Republican Dana Young, also owns Collier Enterprises II, a company that negotiates cell tower contracts on public school property in exchange for rent payments to those cash-strapped schools. The parents are concerned that the towers pose a health hazard to their children, though Frank has said repeatedly there is no proof of adverse effects.

It isn't certain what impact, if any, those parents will have on Frank's campaign. However, if any of them are making phone calls urging neighbors to vote against her, they should probably consider using landlines or hollering across their yards.