LTE coverage Rockville, MD??

Question

Recently moved to Rockville, MD and signed up for the iPhone 5c with Verizon.  We'd been living overseas for a couple years so I was excited about my first spin on LTE.  Unfortunately, so far I've been very disappointed in the coverage.  Most places I only get 2 or 3 dots/bars of coverage...never 5.  But the worst part is going into buildings.  Just about any building I go into the LTE drops down to 1 dot/bar at best.  Many places it goes to 3G or 1X.  I've been surpsided by how many places I drop to 1X.  , which is totally useless.  Also, even when I'm in 3G it's basically useless for data or iMessage etc.  My wife has the 5c as well and has the same issues, so it's not just my phone.  It's basically useless in most stores if I need to look anything up while shopping.
Does anyone know if Verizon plans to do anything to improve penetration of coverage into buildings?

Answer 1

One thing to note is that even though the LTE frequencies Verizon uses, specifically 700Mhz C Band are of lower frequency than the EVDO Frequencies, the LTE signal is often weaker due to a few factors.
1: With higher capacity over a set of spectrum, the signal is less tolerant to noise and degradation. This is why Wireless G, for example is extremely stable in speeds over long distances but Wireless N tends to be all over the board, despite operating on roughly the same spectrum.
2: With more devices connecting to LTE over the EVDO network initially, the effective range of a tower decreases. This is due to an increase in the noise floor caused by many devices, poor antenna configuration, and spectrum contention and overhead used to avoid severe problems with the network.
3: In wooded areas full of pine trees, the pine needles are structured in such a way that actually degrades the LTE Signal moreso than the other frequencies. This is due to a harmonic that is generated when the LTE signal has to go through pines.
Also note that if your phone is connecting to the AWS spectrum, this doesn't penetrate air and buildings as well as 700Mhz C Band does. As a result, you'll find a lower effective signal but one that delivers better performance. Bars are not a total indication of performance and quality, as a result. Any building which is metal, structured in a weird way or is made of concrete will greatly reduce any wireless signal and should have a professional repeating system installed by Verizon or another contractor.
The fix for poor signal is better tower density, optimization, and antenna configurations. In addition, this means less dependence on "Range Extenders" and more dependence on repeating systems that synchronize with the rest of the network.