We live in a somewhat rural area. Long story short, my cell phone reception SUCKS DONKEY HOOTUS.
The last straw was this morning at about 3 am. The breeze must have blown a pocket of ionized gas into Jupiter's transcendent orbit with Scorpio and my phone suddenly (and rudely) came alive with about 6 texts and 2 voicemails. My very best friend from Austin had a layover at the local airport and then her flight got cancelled around dinner time. She needed a place to stay and wanted to go out for dinner/drinks.
I missed it all.
Can someone talk to me about cell phone boosters?
I used one when living on the Lake Michigan shore. It worked, but often it used towers from the other side of the lake. I loaned it to a friend in that area and he used it for several years with good results. Mine is a Wi-Ex. It has an antenna mounted outdoors and a box mounted indoors. If my friend still has it I would be willing to sell mine as I have no use for it currently.
there's basically 2 types of solution. High powered antennae, or modular management.
the 2nd one is basically something the land-line cellphone (AT&T) does, by sending you essentially a small cellphone tower (about 1~2' tall box) that works by registering itself with both a dsl connection and a sattelite connection. its not free or portable.
I know a lot of things telecom but boosters is not really one of them. The little that I do know is that Wilson has a good reputation. I also seem to remember hearing that you will not really be happy with the price of the equipment
See the video on this link.
http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/store/display/178/46/ag-soho-65
Yes, pricey
$575 for full kit via Amazon
The easy answer is to switch cell phone carriers.
Who are you with currently?
If money were not an issue, what carrier would you be most like to be a customer of?
Survey friends who visit your house and the phone they carry to see what works well there.
What you want is a femtocell for your home (the 2nd option madmallard was talking about). It has a big honkin' antenna to pick up the cell signal and then acts like a mini cell tower, so that way not just your phone, but any phones near your house will get a good signal. It's not free though.
JohnRW1621 wrote:
The easy answer is to switch cell phone carriers.
Who are you with currently?
If money were not an issue, what carrier would you be most like to be a customer of?
I'm with Verizon. I'm not too keen on switching because A) nobody's phone seems to do well in my little valley, and B) I get pretty major perks with Verizon through work. If money were no object, I'd probably still be with Verizon given their nationwide coverage (which is becoming a bit less of an issue these days... seems like they all advertise "best coverage")
N Sperlo wrote:
Home, away, or both?
Home only. I get service everywhere else. I can be in the middle of Death Valley and get 4G (I know because I was recently there) but home is the only place where I'm in a dead zone. If I walk to the neighbor's house (a few hundred yards away) I get full 4G. Inside my house I go between one and two bars of 1X. No data, can't make or receive calls except on rare occasions where I can get some broken conversations through.
GameboyRMH wrote:
What you want is a femtocell for your home (the 2nd option madmallard was talking about). It has a big honkin' antenna to pick up the cell signal and then acts like a mini cell tower, so that way not just your phone, but any phones near your house will get a good signal. It's not free though.
My friend has a hunting camp in the sticks. He had a booster out there that used to be like a mini repeater. There was a small antenna on the outside, a box inside, and it basically boosted the signal. For about a 100' radius, you could use your phone. That one died from a lightning strike so he bought another one. This new one has a flat pad on which you lay your phone while you hold it to your ear. Works great, but a little inconvenient.
I'm sure it wasn't a femtocell because he didn't even have electricity out there except for some photo cells, a generator, and a bank of batteries/inverter. I think I just need to boost what I have. His camp had zero service, but you could use the phone with the booster. I figure since I have really bad service, a booster should do well, right?
Not sure I want to pay big bucks so that everyone can share my femtocell service.
I'd love to find a cell phone zapper to render one inoperable.
curtis73 wrote:
I'm sure it wasn't a femtocell because he didn't even have electricity out there except for some photo cells, a generator, and a bank of batteries/inverter. I think I just need to boost what I have. His camp had zero service, but you could use the phone with the booster. I figure since I have really bad service, a booster should do well, right?
Not sure I want to pay big bucks so that everyone can share my femtocell service.
It could have been a femtocell (and that really sounds like what it was), they don't use much power. Depending on what you get you won't necessarily be sharing with the neighbors, the range isn't that much.
Call your cell phone provider and tell them about your trouble and ask them to realign the towers to give you coverage.
But Verizon is the only carrier I've heard that doesn't seem to work well with their customers in this area.
I've had 2 different carriers solve my problem within a couple of days that way. I have no clue if they "realigned" anything or just upped the power slightly, but all I know is I'd go from the spotty coverage like you to full bars.
Try that before you spend money or add anything on.
I'm pretty sure that you can get POTS (that's Plain Old Telephone Service) in some very remote locations. They run these two copper wires to your house, and bingo! You've got phone service. It's pretty cheap too.
In reply to 1988RedT2:
Can't text a POTS line and you can't answer it when you're not home without forwarding it to your cell phone. Doesn't cost much less than the far more capable cell phone. Why bother?
GameboyRMH wrote:
curtis73 wrote:
I'm sure it wasn't a femtocell because he didn't even have electricity out there except for some photo cells, a generator, and a bank of batteries/inverter. I think I just need to boost what I have. His camp had zero service, but you could use the phone with the booster. I figure since I have really bad service, a booster should do well, right?
Not sure I want to pay big bucks so that everyone can share my femtocell service.
It could have been a femtocell (and that really sounds like what it was), they don't use much power. Depending on what you get you won't necessarily be sharing with the neighbors, the range isn't that much.
Wait... I'm confused. Madmallard said:
the 2nd one is basically something the land-line cellphone (AT&T) does, by sending you essentially a small cellphone tower (about 1~2' tall box) that works by registering itself with both a dsl connection and a sattelite connection. its not free or portable.
That sounds to me like a paid data plan with a funky router that uses satellites and rings of jupiter. This was a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet service was about 60 miles away. This was strictly a device that amplified cell service. There was no DSL, there was no "data charge," since there was zero connection to the outside world, it was just a box that plugged into a generator in the sticks.
Maybe I'm just confused about what a femtocell is?
1988RedT2 wrote:
I'm pretty sure that you can get POTS (that's Plain Old Telephone Service) in some very remote locations. They run these two copper wires to your house, and bingo! You've got phone service. It's pretty cheap too.
If I wanted to step back 20 years, I could do that. I do have VOIP that is $35 a year for global service to any number in the known universe, but that doesn't resolve the fact that all of my friends in the cities I've inhabited over the years have my cell phone number and not my new VOIP number.
I haven't had a (whatzit called?) land line since 1999.
The other thing is.... I'm not in a VERY REMOTE LOCATION. I'm 9 miles from DOWNTOWN PITTSBURGH. This particular stretch of road is just a dead zone. I don't need to do anything drastic like using "two copper wires." 
I've got one of these or similar since mine is older and only for the Verizon bands prior to LTE.
Worked ok back home in rural PA but was sort of a PITA to setup. You have to mount the antenna up pretty high and away from the base unit (and definitely on an exterior wall away from the unit) otherwise it would deathlock itself, finding a good spot to mount the antenna where you have the best signal was a pain because it never lined up with something I could attach it to, and like most advertised things involving a distance, it didn't get nearly the range that it's supposed to. It improved the reception moderately in the house so it was mostly a win, but like others said they don't exactly give them away.
Seems to me that a 2 copper wire solution is yours. Your phone doesn't work at home, a landline ONLY works when you are home. Mention your landline in your voicemail, I'm sure some fancy app thing exists to forward your texts to email or something. Done, easy, cheap.
curtis73 wrote:
Wait... I'm confused. Madmallard said:
the 2nd one is basically something the land-line cellphone (AT&T) does, by sending you essentially a small cellphone tower (about 1~2' tall box) that works by registering itself with both a dsl connection and a sattelite connection. its not free or portable.
That sounds to me like a paid data plan with a funky router that uses satellites and rings of jupiter. This was a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet service was about 60 miles away. This was strictly a device that amplified cell service. There was no DSL, there was no "data charge," since there was zero connection to the outside world, it was just a box that plugged into a generator in the sticks.
Maybe I'm just confused about what a femtocell is?
They don't all use an Internet or satellite ($$$$) connection, some just pick up a weak cell signal with a bigass antenna and act like a repeater, like this product The0retical linked to:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16875997551
curtis73 wrote:
I don't need to do anything drastic like using "two copper wires."
Not sure how having a land line that actually works all the time qualifies as "drastic."
My solution: Give people your home number and/or set up your cell phone to forward to your landline.
Your solution: Buy a fancy electronic gizmo that will amplify a non-existent signal or use a high-powered laser beam to bounce a modulated signal off the moon so you can get texts at all hours. Yeah, whatever! I'm sure the people who sell expensive electronic doodads will appreciate your dedication.
I have one. Basically, it is your own personal cell phone repeater. WiEx brand. You have to mount the antenna outside the house and at a different level than the inside box. Then it works great. Note, however, that it does not work for 3G, 4G, etc., just the regular cell phone stuff.
A home repeater should help. Its like a radio antenna. Just lifting your highest point for communication with a real tower.
This may give you a good idea of what you're looking at: http://www.repeaterstore.com/
In reply to curtis73:
what i'm talking about is managed by the service provider, its not an independant piece of technology. this is at&t's:
http://www.att.com/standalone/3gmicrocell/
once you set it up, you register wether it will accept connection from your phone, up to 15 phones, so you're not just sharing it with anyone who passes by, either.
It works by using a broadband connection, not just an at&t dsl as i said before. oops.
Ok.... its all clear to me now. That zBoost looks like exactly what I need. It doesn't do 4G, but 3G is more than I need. I automatically connect to my wifi for data, I just need calls and texts to be reliable.
1988RedT2 wrote:
Not sure how having a land line that actually works all the time qualifies as "drastic."
My solution: Give people your home number and/or set up your cell phone to forward to your landline.
Your solution: Buy a fancy electronic gizmo that will amplify a non-existent signal or use a high-powered laser beam to bounce a modulated signal off the moon so you can get texts at all hours. Yeah, whatever! I'm sure the people who sell expensive electronic doodads will appreciate your dedication.
Once upon a time there were these guys who dreamed of making carriages that went forward without a horse...people thought they were crazy too
