You’re at the Festival d’été de Québec, at the Bell Center for a Canadiens game, or in a crowded event, when suddenly your phone refuses to connect. Don’t worry, you’re not unlucky. It’s just basic math, explains cybersecurity expert Éric Parent.
The problem comes down to a simple technical fact: cell towers can only handle a limited number of “channels”, now called frequencies, at the same time. Parent gives a clear analogy: “If a park is designed for 500 people on a normal day and 10,000 show up for an event, the network just can’t cope.”
Streaming, the number one culprit
Your phone might show that it is “connected”, but there are simply no available slots left to transmit your data. Parent offers a simple and effective solution : “Stop watching YouTube on your phone.”
Streaming apps like TikTok, Netflix, and YouTube are massive bandwidth drains, making network congestion much worse. When thousands of people are streaming videos at the same time in a confined area, the network collapses.
On the highways, another technical challenge comes into play: tower “handoffs”. Cellular networks are divided into geographic zones, each served by its own antenna. As you move, your phone constantly switches from one tower to another. If the overlap between zones is insufficient or towers are too far apart, you fall into a coverage gap.
Next time your signal bars vanish in the middle of a crowd, don’t look for a deeper reason: it’s just the infrastructure giving up under heavy demand.
