Cell Phone Booster

[shell70634]

Does anyone have any personal experience with cell phone boosters? I get 2 bars when standing on my roof but zero or one inside the house. When the cell does ring, the call drops when I answer. I have been paying alot of money to have a landline but wire buried in the 60's isn't very reliable. I have to use satellite for reliable internet.
Recommendations? Personal experience?

Shelly

[dangitgriff]

Contact your wireless provider and ask them. Hell, they may install one for free if you tell them you are dropping their service after your contract is up due to low reliability.
R/Griff

[jimlj]

I had one for a office trailer on a power line job several years ago. I don't remember the brand. It wasn't perfect but it made it so I could make and receive phone calls.

[StuBach]

I’ve had a AT&T microcell since I bought my house in 2012 and it works great (same unit the whole time too). Unfortunately, it requires a high speed internet connection so you’d have to hook up through your satellite internet so if that’s not reliable than you’d have issues. Verizon has something similar also.

I did notice a new feature on my AT&T iPhone where I can now place calls using wifi so they were encouraging me to dump my microcell now. It’s not causing any harm and is free to use so I’ll leave it running till they dump the service but the new WiFi calling feature may be something worth looking into for your situation?

[shell70634]

Contact your wireless provider and ask them.

They are the ones that said I had coverage at my home. They tried to sell me internet that is unavailable in my area. They said their tech was to busy to talk to me. Of course this is a week after I bought service. Attempted to get a ATT tech on the phone 3 times and couldn't. Unfortunately, the other provider has no coverage either (Verizon) even though they say they do. Had a friend come over and he couldn't get a signal either. On the bright side, I can get 2 bars on the range behind my shop. Good excuse to be on the range.

[gbrown]

I know nothing of boosters. See if your provider has a hot spot. My provider is Verizon, they have a "MyFi", a mobile internet Hotspot. A friend of mine had one way out in the country, and it ran his internet. I used mine at my deer camp where I was lucky to get 2 or 3 bars. I could watch movies or sports with it. Problem is, an extra access charge and data usage, but you could use it for wifi phone calling.

[NyFirefighter357]

If you have home Wifi, you should be able to use it to connect your cell phone calls I use it at home. Check your settings for use wifi calling.

[Gofaaast]

WiFi if your carrier has that and you have WiFi. When I had Sprint they didn’t have WiFi calling but gave me a box that connected to Internet that did the same thing. It worked great just had to reset the box once in awhile like some routers I have had require.

[GregLaROCHE]

I’m in the same situation as you. Phone works outside house, but not inside. Internet by satellite (expensive and very slow). I tried two $100. boosters from Amazon. Never worked. Found out that the frequency of the phone service is important. There are many different ones. A booster for mine will cost over $500. I’m still deciding what to do.

[10-x]

Have verizon and pay a lot a month for phone, ipad and service, which is sorry as can be at home. My yard guy left me a voice message a week ago yesterday, showed up on phone this Wednesday. Going back to talk to them for about the 30th time. They can adjustbill or guess I’ll dump them again.

[JohnFreeman]

Good ones won't be cheap, but yes they work

[JohnFreeman]

WiFi if your carrier has that and you have WiFi. When I had Sprint they didn’t have WiFi calling but gave me a box that connected to Internet that did the same thing. It worked great just had to reset the box once in awhile like some routers I have had require.

^ This!!

Works great.

[Elroy]

Sounds like you may be able to use a signal repeater .They don't boost the signal ,but rather pick up a signal via an antenna that you mount in a spot that you get a signal ( in your case the roof),and they cast the signal to a unit that you place in your house. My brother has one, and he can get a signal anywhere in his house with it.

[1006]

I have had great luck with a free service from Google, called “google voice”.

You need WiFi, a smart phone with WiFi reception, or an IPad, computer, or anything that will connect to the internet.

Once you get your free phone number from google, it will ring on you home WiFi devices, and —this is the part I like most— it will relay to any other telephone number that you direct. You can relay the calls to more than one number. Whichever phone is answered first completes the call.

When my phone rings, every device in the house rings. My phone also rings as long as I have either a WiFi connection or just the cell phone connection.

Occasionally, the WiFi side of the devices rings before the phone does which can be annoying.

The voice mails are sent to any combination of e-mails, cell phone voice mail, and text that you select in the settings.

So, I give the google number out to most people and businesses. My close friends have both numbers—you cannot use I-messaging or FaceTime with the google number, you have to use you e-mail reference or IPhone number for those Apple services.

[shell70634]

Thank you all for the info. I've contacted a commercial booster company and even though I'm not going to purchase from them their tech gave me some great advice and recommendations. It looks like cell booster for my situation will cost 500-700 for commercial grade equipment. Now I have to determine if any of my phone calls are worth that much.

Shelly

[MUSTANG]

Shell70634:

You indicated you have Internet service over Satellite. Does your Cell Phone have Voice over WiFi capability? If you do; you should be able to enable your phone to operate Voice over WiFi; set your phone to recognize your home WiFi device, and send and receive calls over your home WiFi.

We have the same problem at both our Nevada and Montana houses as they are rural and at the edge of Cell Provider services. Our Cell Phones are older iPhones; but the support Cell service over WiFi. We had to turn the WiFI service on in the settings portion of the phone. We also have to look and make sure the phones "SWITCH" from the AT&T Cell Phone Carrier to the WiFi when we arrive at the house and go in. In our Case we will see ATT and bars if we are on the Cell Tower signal; when it switches over to WiFi we will see ATT WiFi when we are on the house WiFi signal. Sometimes have to force the transfer at the house; which is nothing more than opening the Cell Dial Screen and attempting to place a call to a number; the phone switches to WiFi if it needs to for us at that time - usually not required; but that's how we "Force It".


We used to use the AT&T repeater hardware device, When the iPhone software started to support Voice over WiFi we switched to accessing Cell over WiFi and got much better service levels.

[waksupi]

I got one last spring, it does give me signal in the cabin now, but not always 100% reliable. Definitely better than before, though!

[GregLaROCHE]

Please let us know what you find out. I need to do something. Besides lack of normal phone use, when I have a delivery that has to be signed for, they call first and if no answer they don’t come. Too many times I get a message that nobody was home, when I was there all day long.

[shell70634]

What I found out: Don't use cheap coax. if your run is more than 50 ft. by the best. Scan your area for the frequency band, ie: 2, 12, 17, and match your booster to them. I get band 12 at my house, one mile north I get band 2, one mile east I get 14. I ordered a booster that covers all 3 bands. Don't believe the maps on line that show tower locations. They aren't up to date. Buy a system with directional antenna. Put it as high as you can. Mount solid enough that it won't move in high wind. Buy from a company that will accept returns. Find a friendly KNOWLEDGABLE technician that deals in cell phone boosters. The techs at the major cell providers that really know things are buried deep in the companies bowels.
I ordered from Amazon and can return it. I will replace the RG6 coax with Rg11 or better when I determine how long my run is.
Lesson learned so far: I'm to old to be climbing 7/12 pitch roof with a cell phone in my hand. Use kids. They bounce and are easy to come by. I didn't fall off but I tried.

Shelly

[firefly1957]

My service is verizon nearest tower is 3 miles plus and only tower for them I have issues with signal all the time for a while signal was really weak happened to catch the tech near the tower he told me he was ordered to point the antennas away from this area that is mostly vacant state land.
I am not sure how it will affect a relaying setup but standards change in January I had to get a new phone to prepare old one would stop working.

[Thundarstick]

I live in a cinder block house with a metal roof, so you can imagine the reception in my house! I have a Weboost signal booster. Part is mounted to one end of the house, a coax brings the signal to the repeater inside the house. I can use the cell phone in 90% of the house now instead of just by the kitchen window! What your after is available, works great, and will set you back about 5 or 6 Benjamins.

[dbosman]

We had one installed at work. We expected a couple of grand but were surprised that it came in at under eight hundred. An antenna on the outside of a Window, air gap through the glass, (up to 100 meter) cable to the adapter. After Covid we'll probably have several more installed on other flours.

[Mr_Sheesh]

What you'd want in terms of coax is, coax with the lowest losses in the frequencies you will be using, not just the most expensive coax. Losses are usually in dB, decibels, per foot or yard or meter; less dB = less losses.

[dangitgriff]

Usually, the larger the coaxial cable, the lower the loss. RF cables should all be 50 ohm type, not 75 ohm as used on TV cable.
R/Griff

[Mr_Sheesh]

It does depend on the antenna's characteristic impedance too, you have to use a Balun (impedance matching device) to match a 300ohm antenna to a 50 ohm transmitter, for example. (I'm not an expert in the arcane magic of antennas but worked with microwave engineers at one local large cell phone provider, they had some interesting things going on.)

One of the rather odd things in electronics is that, while many electronics math calculations only require ~0.1 to 1.0% or so precision, in Microwave Engineering there is at least one calculation that requires MANY digits of precision, sadly I don't remember the name of that. Arcana is arcane though :)

[shell70634]

Well, I bought one off Amazon. Mounted the antenna high as I could. Spent 2 days trying to get a signal boost. GPS'd both ATT towers and aimed antenna with a compass and map. Did not boost at all. Returned to Amazon and received refund.
I also mounted an external WIFI antenna. I now have wifi in both shops. It works great. Now I get my messages immediately instead of getting a dozen when I go in the house.
Life is good.

Shelly

[pertnear]

We use a magicjack as a landline home phone. Uses internet with what's call voice-over IP. Cheap & works great. Just FYI

[farmbif]

I looked into such devices not too long ago and it seemed that Wilson has a wide range of cell signal boosters and antennas, not having a degree in electrical engineering I was quickly into information overload. with landline phone company going belly up I may just look back into the cell signal booster rabbit hole and give Wilson a call to try and figure out what will work best in the situation I have.

[bdicki]

I got one from Verizon and it works, it needs an internet connection and has a GPS. We have to put it near a window and it goes down if we lose the internet but it works good. $250 and I've been since told if you whine enough it's free.

[james23]

We use a wilson to boost signal in our tin covered shop. Works good

[BrutalAB]

Dad just installed one in his shop a couple weeks ago. Before we would have little to no signal. Now its the best signal area on the property by a wide margin.

[jonp]

We use a wilson to boost signal in our tin covered shop. Works good

+1 Wilson makes a good one