Cell Booster

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1

I don’t get good signal at my house so I am looking at boosters or WiFi.

I get signal in one narrow location outside.

I will have fiber to the house. Something with an internet connection?

I prefer to not put anything on the roof. Have one penetration for the plumbing vent and prefer to keep it at that.

Any suggestions/recommendations?

Gene
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2

My phone (iPhone 8 Plus) and my cellular provider (Verizon) allow me to use Wi-Fi Calling. Simply, when my phone is on Wi-Fi that is internet connected, it uses that rather than the cellular service. The clearest possible phone connections, in my experience.

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I get signal in one narrow location outside.

I will have fiber to the house. Something with an internet connection?

I prefer to not put anything on the roof. Have one penetration for the plumbing vent and prefer to keep it at that.

Any suggestions/recommendations?

Gene

You say you have fiber to house. That is certainly the way to go. I don’t have that option and rely on a cell booster. Below is the one I have been using for six years. Wilson is a solid brand name better than the cheap stuff sold by cell providers or discounters.

I live in a heavily wooded forest and there is barely any cell service at all. This amplifier makes it tolerable but don’t expect the same as if you had a hardwired internet. It gets down to how much signal you have in the first place. Any amplifier can only amplify what is already there so it really depends on that most of all.

Nothing on the roof. Outdoor Yagi is mounted on a six foot post and pointed at the Verizon tower about three miles away through heavily wooded terrain. 75 Ohm cable is routed indoors to amplifier which must be near AC power. From amplifier, there is another 75 Ohm cable that runs to indoor antennae which can be either a dome or a flat panel depending on the shape of the area you want to cover. I went with flat panel.

https://www.wilsonamplifiers.com/wilson-pro-70-plus-75-ohm-c…

I see a link on their website that my model has been replaced with newer version.

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The wifi calling as already suggested is likely the best choice.

However, it looks like T-Mobile has a CellSpot device that could work as well.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/4g-lte-cellspot

In a nutshell, it functions as your own personal cell phone tower that is hardwired to your home internet connection. Range is highly limited, and call hand offs from the CellSpot to the main cellular network are iffy at best. Calls will not hand off from the cellular network to your CellSpot. So finish your phone calls before getting too close to home. When leaving home with a call in progress, your calls might get dropped.

–Peter

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Having used the AT&T and Sprint versions of Personal Cell Towers, these work but are inferior to WiFi Calling which is available on both iOS and Android products.

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Same here at home. Virtually no cell signal, but wifi calling is great for anywhere the internet wifi signal reaches. Tried boosters including top of the line units mentioned above. Nada at my location and returned them all. This was when we only had satellite internet service options which don’t support Wifi calling. Two years ago Centurylink brought in 40mg/sec DSL which seems like a miracle in comparison and supports WiFi calling well.

Bonus: turn on airplane mode and double your phone battery life (stopping it from constantly searching for cellular service that doesn’t exist).

glh

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I don’t get good signal at my house so I am looking at boosters or WiFi.

I get signal in one narrow location outside.

I will have fiber to the house. Something with an internet connection?

Set up a good WiFi mesh network in your house and connect it to the fiber. If you stroll outside near the house (or have an outside BBQ/dining/patio area), extend the WiFi network to those outside areas as well. DONE.

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Hi RHinCT et al,

I set our phone to use WiFi at our current location. They seem “happier” when they do a software update but otherwise I can’t tell because in the city there is good coverage.

In TX, I used a Wilson 4G booster and it worked Ok. This house doesn’t have a “convenient” place for a booster like that one.

Once I get the propane pipe in and the exterior water lines laid, I will have the last 150 of fiber set and get the “inside” going. Hopefully, that will fix it!

Thanks,

Gene
All holdings and some statistics on my Fool profile page
http://my.fool.com/profile/gdett2/info.aspx