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Sorry, Bi-Directional Amplifier. A signal booster.

http://www.wilsonelectronics.c...

How about an airave or a cellular repeater? Sounds like you'd be an ideal candidate for one...

http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/

Yup. This will actually improve in-house wifi - Your neighbors won't cause as much interference to your network.

If you need outdoor wifi - set up an access point outside.

It will be detrimental to cell phone reception indoors however - but there are technical solutions to that. The amount of money you save on energy by having reflective barriers will make up for the cost of a Wilson amplifier setup - http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/ProductListing.aspx?Category=9 . Interestingly enough, the shielding of the home will be beneficial here - Such amp systems break if there is insufficient isolation between the outdoor antenna and the indoor one.

http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/

I have installed MANY of these in buildings, and if you have ANY sort of signal outside the house, down to about -90dBm, these boosters will amplify that about 60dBm, coupled with a good 5dBm indoor antenna, and 10-15dBm outdoor antenna, and you get very good signal indoors.

That's the crappy car version, won't do squat for his home. Try this one instead: http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/801247.php The new DT series gets GREAT results while keeping costs low and installation troubles to a minimum.

Take a look at them. A little pricey but saved my rear end in a situation just like this. http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/

You might want to forward your question(s) to these folks:

http://wilsonelectronics.com/

I don't have any affiliation with Wilson, and I don't do Internet in the field, but their cellphone amps and antennas have enabled me to establish voice service with cellular towers many miles further away than what I normally could when I'm out doing nature photography in remote parts of the U.S. Southwest. Their gear is also said to be popular with long-haul truckers who need cellular access in remote areas. They may just be able to recommend a setup (typically an amplifier/antennna combo) that will put you in business for terrestrial 2G/3G services. Do note that even with my kit, I still find black holes; they're just not as huge as they would be with a non-amplified phone.

* * * * *

Error 416: Sig not found.

I'll second this opinion.

I'm in a rural area of northern central Ohio. Cable stops about 3 miles south, and we're more than twice the maximum distance away from the telco equipment to get DSL.

But... Verizon offers EVDO coverage in the area!! The tower is at a park about 3 miles south of me. I'm using a Rev.0 card (Rev.A is the newer round of cards), so my latency is a little high. I usually see ~300ms or so on ping times. Download speed averages around 1mbit (.8 - 1.2). The upload speed is only 100k/s or so, but thats normal with EVDO.

The plan I have with Verizon is $59.99/month. The only problem with Verizon is that they have been known to cut customers off for using too much bandwidth (5GB+ /month). I've gone over the limit once or twice, but not regularly. I haven't received "the letter" yet, so I'm continuing to be careful and enjoying my only reasonable option for broadband.

One trick that I found: I adjusted the TCP receive window to compensate a bit for the higher latency. I'm not having any problems with dropped packets, as my signal strength is great. I simply changed the setting to allow more data to be transfered before having to acknowledge (and pay the penalty with the high latency).

If you want to put the PCMCIA card in a desktop PC (as I have), PCI-PCMCIA cards are easy enough find. I'm using one made by SIIG, and it works fine. Was pretty cheap too.

You can get good external antennas and amplifiers if you need. Check out wilsonelectronics.com if you are interested in that sort of thing.

I use this antenna (without an amplifier):
http://wilsonelectronics.com/ViewProductB.php?ID=1

I have it mounted on a thick dowel rod that is in a patio umbrella base behind my desk. The dowel is cut so that the tip of the antenna is almost touching the ceiling. It works great for me.

They also sell directional antennas that could be mounted on a mast of some sort outdoors if you need to get better line of sight with the tower.

-SF

A buddy of mine who lives in BFE Wisconsin has looking to buy one for his house for about six months now -- he only gets cell reception while standing on his western porch (presumably on one leg, with the opposite arm raised high into the air.) The price has been a bit of an issue with him; but this weekend his wife was out there making a call and she got stung by yellow jackets. I bet she makes him buy one now!

Use an external antenna. A lot of phones still have connectors for those, so no hacks required there.

Obligatory karma whoring: Here's a good place to buy one.

For CAN$50 I got myself a mag mount 5 dBi external antenna.

Use an external antenna. A lot of phones still have connectors for those, so no hacks required there.

Obligatory karma whoring: Here's a good place to buy one.

For CAN$50 I got myself a mag mount 5 dBi external antenna.

Just installed a Wilson Electronics cell phone amplier http://wilsonelectronics.com/amps/wcamps.htm for a customer that has really sucky service inside his steel office building. An external antenna brings the signal into an amplifier. Inside cell phone connect to a small ceiling mounted antenna. See images of the install here: http://www.stoneflytech.com/gallery/Cellular-Wirel ess-Amplifier-82

Second I recommend acquiring a headset. You'll need a wireless headset like the bluetooth Jabra BT200 so you can walk around. However if you can rig up your antenna-boosted cell phone to a regular landline headset like the Plantronics DT12 then I'm sure you'll save on costly dead battery replacements on the BT200 (impossible, so you have to buy a new one which is why replacing one costs so much). I have a DT12 and love it.

And lastly, back to Wilson Electronics, I also recommend the use of a cellular amp if you have reception problems in your house. Wilson makes some excellent cellular amplifiers with an external antenna like the 301103 I mentioned above with the low-profile "stealth" antenna model 301106. It sounds like an excellent product overall.

I have but one wish for my cellular needs. My folks live in an area with very little cellular coverage. You can get a bar, sometimes two on the 5 mile treck off the highway to their house. You can get 3-4 bars in some places on the highest peaks of the hills around their home. The of course are at the bottom of one of those hills, and are on the wrong side of the hill. You can however get a signal at the top of that hill and about 150 down the driveway. If I can get the signal on my cell then surely a quality external antenna and amp can do much better. What I would like to find is some device that can act as a digital interface to the cellular network. That device would need to connect to a commodity network such as Ethernet (wifi, copper, or fiber), transmit the signal over the network to another node, and have that node take that same signal and put it out on another antenna at that new site. This is really quite similar to what their amp does already, although it's not dumping the signal onto a completely different network and rebroadcasting it; the amp simply rebroadcast the amplified signal on the internal antenna at full strength. You cell phone should look for the tower with the strongest signal and thus will use the internal antenna (this also means you don't have to physically connect your antenna to your cell). Now I know things like this can be done with fancy commercial first-responder equipment like what NYC now uses post-9/11 to merge all the various city agencies together on demand. They can put a cellular call through to a person's 2-way if need be. What I'd do with something like this is put Wilson's large trucker antenna and amp down the driveway a couple hundred yards where it can get a decent signal. Then I'd dump it on fiber back to the house where I'd rebroadcast it on an inside antenna like the 301103. It's a cellular bridge of sorts, or a repeater depending on how you look at it. Does anyone know of such a thing?

Second I recommend acquiring a headset. You'll need a wireless headset like the bluetooth Jabra BT200 so you can walk around. However if you can rig up your antenna-boosted cell phone to a regular landline headset like the Plantronics DT12 then I'm sure you'll save on costly dead battery replacements on the BT200 (impossible, so you have to buy a new one which is why replacing one costs so much). I have a DT12 and love it.

And lastly, back to Wilson Electronics, I also recommend the use of a cellular amp if you have reception problems in your house. Wilson makes some excellent cellular amplifiers with an external antenna like the 301103 I mentioned above with the low-profile "stealth" antenna model 301106. It sounds like an excellent product overall.

I have but one wish for my cellular needs. My folks live in an area with very little cellular coverage. You can get a bar, sometimes two on the 5 mile treck off the highway to their house. You can get 3-4 bars in some places on the highest peaks of the hills around their home. The of course are at the bottom of one of those hills, and are on the wrong side of the hill. You can however get a signal at the top of that hill and about 150 down the driveway. If I can get the signal on my cell then surely a quality external antenna and amp can do much better. What I would like to find is some device that can act as a digital interface to the cellular network. That device would need to connect to a commodity network such as Ethernet (wifi, copper, or fiber), transmit the signal over the network to another node, and have that node take that same signal and put it out on another antenna at that new site. This is really quite similar to what their amp does already, although it's not dumping the signal onto a completely different network and rebroadcasting it; the amp simply rebroadcast the amplified signal on the internal antenna at full strength. You cell phone should look for the tower with the strongest signal and thus will use the internal antenna (this also means you don't have to physically connect your antenna to your cell). Now I know things like this can be done with fancy commercial first-responder equipment like what NYC now uses post-9/11 to merge all the various city agencies together on demand. They can put a cellular call through to a person's 2-way if need be. What I'd do with something like this is put Wilson's large trucker antenna and amp down the driveway a couple hundred yards where it can get a decent signal. Then I'd dump it on fiber back to the house where I'd rebroadcast it on an inside antenna like the 301103. It's a cellular bridge of sorts, or a repeater depending on how you look at it. Does anyone know of such a thing?

Second I recommend acquiring a headset. You'll need a wireless headset like the bluetooth Jabra BT200 so you can walk around. However if you can rig up your antenna-boosted cell phone to a regular landline headset like the Plantronics DT12 then I'm sure you'll save on costly dead battery replacements on the BT200 (impossible, so you have to buy a new one which is why replacing one costs so much). I have a DT12 and love it.

And lastly, back to Wilson Electronics, I also recommend the use of a cellular amp if you have reception problems in your house. Wilson makes some excellent cellular amplifiers with an external antenna like the 301103 I mentioned above with the low-profile "stealth" antenna model 301106. It sounds like an excellent product overall.

I have but one wish for my cellular needs. My folks live in an area with very little cellular coverage. You can get a bar, sometimes two on the 5 mile treck off the highway to their house. You can get 3-4 bars in some places on the highest peaks of the hills around their home. The of course are at the bottom of one of those hills, and are on the wrong side of the hill. You can however get a signal at the top of that hill and about 150 down the driveway. If I can get the signal on my cell then surely a quality external antenna and amp can do much better. What I would like to find is some device that can act as a digital interface to the cellular network. That device would need to connect to a commodity network such as Ethernet (wifi, copper, or fiber), transmit the signal over the network to another node, and have that node take that same signal and put it out on another antenna at that new site. This is really quite similar to what their amp does already, although it's not dumping the signal onto a completely different network and rebroadcasting it; the amp simply rebroadcast the amplified signal on the internal antenna at full strength. You cell phone should look for the tower with the strongest signal and thus will use the internal antenna (this also means you don't have to physically connect your antenna to your cell). Now I know things like this can be done with fancy commercial first-responder equipment like what NYC now uses post-9/11 to merge all the various city agencies together on demand. They can put a cellular call through to a person's 2-way if need be. What I'd do with something like this is put Wilson's large trucker antenna and amp down the driveway a couple hundred yards where it can get a decent signal. Then I'd dump it on fiber back to the house where I'd rebroadcast it on an inside antenna like the 301103. It's a cellular bridge of sorts, or a repeater depending on how you look at it. Does anyone know of such a thing?