I Got Cell!!!

I live in one of those notorious "cell shadows", with a big hill between my house and the nearest cell tower, which is just about two miles away as the crow flies. I can make a cell call — barely — if I go outside on my second floor deck or walk up my driveway to the road. On a good day, if the planets are aligned just right, the Gods are with me, and I've eaten all the spinach on my plate, I can get a weak signal if I stand near one of my north facing windows.

So for all intents and purposes, I'm in a cell dead zone. Until now. I'd heard about signal boosters and amplifiers, but they seemed 1) expensive, 2) difficult to understand, with all the Yagi yadda yadda (Yagi is a type of antenna) and 3) a hassle to install.

Then I read about Wilson Electronic's SignalBoost DT (DT stands for 'desktop'). Everything except the mounting pole comes in one kit. (You don't have to mount it on a pole; there's also a wall mount option and a window suction cup mount, if you get enough signal at a window.) There are essentially two parts — a small externtal antenna (shown at left, attached to a 10 foot pole on my 2nd floor deck) and an internal antenna/amplifier that looks similar to a common wireless router. You connect the external antenna to the interior amplier with coax cable, which comes in the box.

It took me about an hour to set up, including attaching the pole to the deck post, drilling a hole in an exterior wall, running the coax cable down, through the basement and up through a hole in the floor of my home office, and plugging it in.

The miracle is that IT WORKS!!! My signal strength up on the deck runs roughly between -90 and -95. (Cell phone signal strength is measured in decibels, and is a negative number. The higher the number, e.g. closer to 0, the stronger the signal. So a -70 dB signal is stronger than a -90 dB signal.) In my house, my unamplified signal strength, when I get a signal at all, is typically -100 to -105, a level that makes dropped calls almost a certainty. Most cell phones have a test mode where you can see the signal strength in dB. I found it kind of fun to see the signal strength change as I moved around to different locations inside and outside my house. (Wilson Electronics posts a .pdf of how to put most popular phones into test mode.)

So how does this little booster setup perform? Inside, in my home office, on the other side of the house from the window where I can sometimes get a signal, my Verizon phone is showing signal strength from -71 to -78 dB. That's four bars in bar-talk. Phenmonenal! I even tried my backup AT&T Go Phone (a Pay-As-You-Go phone for those places where I don't get a Verizon signal.) To my surprise, since I've never been able to make an AT&T call anywhere right around my house, and Wilson states you have to have at least some signal strength for the amplifier to work, I was able to make a call! (Yes, the booster works with all major carriers except Nextel, and also works with wireless data cards.)

The downside to the Wilson SignalBoost DT is that the internal amplifier only covers a small area, like a single room. If you need whole house coverage, you'll need to go with a more powerful and expensive system. But for my needs, this works just fine. The cost? Most online retailers sell the DT Signalboost for about $330. I found it at Alternative Wireless on sale for $279.

Locally, Wilson cell booster products are sold by Cronk's Electronics in Liberty. (845-292-0324). They're great folks, and a great choice if you want someone to install the antenna and hook everything up.

If you're in a weak cell area, one of these booster / amplifier set ups could be just the ticket to much better cell reception.

Comments

[mal]

David, to further improve your Verizon in-home cell reception, you might like to take a look at Verizon's new "Network Extender" product (generically known as a "femtocell"). It lists at $249, but there are no monthly fees.

http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/19053/verizon-network-extender-takes-it-inside
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/68865.html

[vik1066]

I also use this Wilson Signal Booster for better reception of signals and believe me it improves a lot in my cellular signals and the problem of bad signal reception is no more for me. Everyone who has a problem of cell signals,they would have go for this.