How do you convey the effect of a poor phone connection?

Question

Recently, I was talking on a phone which had a faulty connection, as a result of which I was only able to hear the person's voice in patches. Something like "......I think.........may.......jaguar....study.." (where "..." represents things which he said that I was not able to hear). I tried:

I can hear you only in patches

That sounds awkward. How do I say this to him in a natural way?

Answer 1

You could say this:

I'm sorry I can't hear you. You're breaking up!

From Macmillan Dictionary:

break up
5 [intransitive] if the sound on a radio or mobile phone breaks up, you can no longer hear the person who is speaking on it.
I can't hear you, you're breaking up.

Answer 2

There are various ways of conveying difficulty in hearing a caller:

You're breaking up, it's really difficult to hear you
This is a really bad connection, could you please call back
It's really difficult to hear you, could we try again
You sound very spotty, could you call again

Breaking up is a hold over from radio usage days, it can be used for both mobile and landlines.

Usually the caller is asked to call back and hopefully a better connection is made.
When appropriate, the caller may ask if it's possible to recall on a landline, or the callee may offer a landline to call on.

In extreme circumstances

I can't hear you, can you hear me?

is used and after a few moments the call is automatically ended with reattempts by the caller, or by either side if they know each other.

Answer 3

Whether the signal is bad due to crosstalk, lost packets, or delayed packets, you can say that the message or sentence is garbled:

gar·ble (gär′bəl)

1. To mix up or distort to such an extent as to make misleading or incomprehensible: The report garbled all the historical facts.
2. To scramble (a signal or message), as by erroneous encoding or faulty transmission.
3. …

Note that garbled describes the message that was received, not the connection.