Report: Most U.S. Mobile Phone Owners Complain About Dropped Calls, SMS Spam & Slow Download Speeds

Judging from the latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, U.S. cell phone users are at risk of turning into cranks. In this survey, the vast majority of cell owners complain about dropped calls (72%), unwanted sales and marketing calls (68%), text message spam (69%) and slow download speeds (77%). Smartphone owners, it’s worth noting, reported more problems with dropped calls, unwanted text messages and slow download speeds than other cell owners.

Among all cell owners, 6% complained that they have to deal with dropped calls several times a day and another 6% said their calls drop at least once per day. A lucky 26% of respondents, however, told Pew that they never experience dropped calls.

It’s also interesting how many U.S. cell phone owners still have to deal with unwanted calls from telemarketers and spam texts. As the Pew report notes, there are a number of legal restrictions that apply to both of these activities. Judging from this data, though, it seems many unscrupulous telemarketers and text message spammers happily ignore many of these restrictions.

As for the report’s numbers on download speeds, 21% of respondents said they experience slow download speeds at least once per day. The study, however, asked respondents whether they regularly experience “slow download speeds that prevent things from loading as quickly as [they] would like them to.” We all probably want our download speeds to be higher and for everything to download as quickly as we would like it to. Given the way the question was phrased, it’s hard to decipher whether this number reflects users legitimately complaining about getting slower speeds than advertised and or just users who would like their carrier’s networks (and phones) to be faster.