Slashdot Mirror

If you get any signal outside your house then a cell repeater is the way to go. It takes the strong signal outside, and... repeats... it inside. If you get 3+ bars outside then an omni directional antenna (outside) is the quickest and easiest. Otherwise a directional antenna (or two if the 800 and 1900 band towers are in different directions) is the way to go.

I've put up two of these solutions, one at work to extend the excellent signal outside into our warehouse, and another at a location that barely gets 1 bar outside, using two directional antennas to point at different towers.

Not trying to advertise for anyone, but I got my stuff from http://www.cellantenna.com/ using modified versions of their CAE700-70 system. Granted, that's an expensive and powerful package, you might not need that high end a system for your needs. Give them a call, or try hitting up http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/ as I got some great advice from the folks there.

Good luck!

AT&T has the phone vendors at their mercy and cripple the capabilities of the phones they sell to protect their own vested interests and not those of the consumer. There are have been several GSM phone models sold in Europe with WIFI and VOIP capabilities but those same models are only sold in the US without those capabilities removed or disabled. Recently Cingular/AT&T and now t-mobile require all J2ME applications that use "advanced" features be signed with a carrier certificate as opposed to a usual code signing certificate from a trusted CA like verisign. The user no longer has control over what software they can run on their phone and whom they can trust with newer phones sold by AT&T's with their customized firmware. If one wishes to make a networked application run on a phone with the AT&T's firmware they will need to fork over big $$$ to get it "certified", leaving hobbyists and small market players out in the cold. carriers confronted forum discussion Who benefits from the carrier being the only entity who decides which software will run on the user's phones? AT&T can cry all they want about capitalism and free markets but until they stop interfering in the markets the same way they accuse the government and google of doing then they only come off as hyprocrites.

I'd guess just about anybody with a 'visions' enabled Sprint phone does. I think it is like $20/mo or so, and I get pretty much unlimited web, and some tv channels. My google 'live' application was a free install, and costs me nothing extra to use when it hits the 'web'.

Hell, depending on the phone you have (some you have to manually 'unlock' [see 2nd posting down on this page]), you can use them as a free semi-broadband modem for your phone via a connect cable or bluetooth). I imagine if you're doing p2p stuff they'll nail ya, but, seems to work fine for just simple web stuff I hear...

Probably just feeding the trolls...

I didn't say I agreed with the police using cell phones for "security", just that they do. And I believe it is harder to scan than the plain old radios that everyone has a scanner for.

As for Yellowstone, that was an example, I haven't ever used a cell phone there, but it appears that some people do:
http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/archive/index.ph p/t-2665.html

But a typical 150- to 200-foot tower would cover a radius of 2 1/2 miles in urban areas and five miles in rural areas.

The major component of the cell phone system is the cell. The cell phone system divides an area of service into a set of cells on what might look like a hexagonal grid. A phone tower or base station in the center of the cell covers an area of 2 or 3 square miles around the tower.

In metropolitan areas, the 'radius' of a cell is a few miles, at *most*.

US Cellular only give in building coverage for a radius of three miles. When you are three miles away from where US Cellular is trying to cover, you miss half.

or here

I recently bought an LG VX6000 from Verizon, and after digging around for a while, learned how to get my GPS coordinates by messing around with settings, then dialing a special 922 number (careful, sometimes in some areas, it forwards to 911). Not exactly a practical way to gather it, but it works.

Anyway, those sites have just about everything you'd ever want to know about any cell phone from any company. The free WAP service that you can get on most Verizon phones is pretty sweet.

There are other people sharing horror stories about Number Portability Requests over at WirelessAdvisor too. There's some very useful information there.

This problem relates both to people trying to switch FROM AT&T and to people trying to switch TO AT&T... while it may be a stalling tactic on AT&T, it seems unlikely and they wouldn't want to give themselves such a PR black eye.

All the major carriers except AT&T are using one portability company. Looks like AT&T ought to explore using that same firm.

There are more horror stories at Wirelessadvisor.com.