Today's mobile phone technology troubles 4161

I don't know about NYC area tunnels but I just returned from a trip to Seattle and have a tunnel experience to relate: I was talking to my brother via cell phone as we were about to go through a tunnel (a short one at the end of the I90 bridge crossing Lake Washington from Mercer Island to the Seattle metropolitan area) so I quickly ended the conversation.

I watched the phone's signal strength meter for when coverage would end. Signal strength never even dropped. From then on I looked for signs of cell antennas whenever we were in the tunnel (that happened often as we stayed with my parents in Factoria and my brother lives in Seattle) but could not find any.

There's a high spot in the tunnel where I can't see either end. It's possible that there's a cell facing either end that's line-of-site to vehicles on the right side of the high spot and response time on the signal strength meter is not fast enough to show the loss of signal for the brief period of time we're in the high spot. Unfortunately, I never called anyone else (and nobody called me) while approaching or in the tunnel for the rest of the trip. -- The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.