Recommendations for Cellular Signal Repeaters?

itwerx asks: "Like most folks these days I have a cell phone and indoor reception problems, especially in my house which is behind a ridge from most of the carriers in my area. So, I'm looking for an indoor wireless repeater (not a plug-in amp). There are a lot of them out there ranging from $300-$3000+, but for every article, forum or newsgroup posting proclaiming the relative merits of this brand or model over another I find another post saying that they suck. A couple of units I'm looking at are the Wi-Ex YX500 series and some of the ones made by Wilson Electronics (not providing direct links so as to avoid boosting their Google ratings). Has anybody here used these, or junked them in favor of something better?"

Comments

Watch out...

[kf4lhp]

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-267221 A1.html
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-266089 A1.html

Watch out if you buy one; they can easily create interference to other users in the 800 MHz band, like public safety radio systems, and the FCC takes a rather dim view of this - see the FCC notices sent to some unlucky users above.

Re:May not solve your problem.

[PCGAB]

Try a passive repeater. My gf had terrible reception in her house, she bought a $8.00 passive repeater for cars/windows, etc. and it added a bar or two to her reception on the front of the house. Which was the most important area to her. Being so cheap, it cant _hurt_ to try one..

You're going about this all wrong

[Dryanta]

Your perspective is kind of dumb when you pay a provider every month for service that does not do what you want. I have no idea how wireless providers tricked users into thinking signal problems are ALWAYS their fault. Just a tip to the wise, cell phone towers are normally broadcasting at less than 50% of capacity due to the fact they are terrified of the FCC, even though they have the licenses. I have cingular, and my wife has cingular. Both of my bosses, and everybody in my office has cingular. I called 611 on each of the phones, and filed a complaint with tech support about the 'poor service' in the area from five or six accounts. I also had one rep pull up a map and tell me the tower I was closest to. Then I found out that I was getting poor signal standing right next to it. I am a wireless engineer, so I made a couple guesses as to what could be causing the trouble (water in the fittings, disconnected pigtail, local source of interference from another carrier) and used the county locator service to find the ph# of the primary point of contact for the tower. I called the local cingular office, advised them of my situation, my trouble ticket numbers, the location of the tower, and my findings. The next day, they pointed a sector right at me and dialed up the gain. Now, I have 3-4 bars inside when I used to have to 1-2 outside. This might sound like I went to a lot of effort or something, but it took 2-3 hours tops - and now my calls don't drop!

Re:You're going about this all wrong

[itwerx]

thinking signal problems are ALWAYS their fault.

Ordinarily I would indeed be chasing this up the tech support chain but service is great everywhere else and I've looked at the tower maps and it's pretty clear that it's simply a matter of geography and that it only affects a fairly small area, i.e. not something I'd ask them to put in a whole tower for.
      However, that said, I may be getting something similar to the response you got, and this may be a useful approach for others with the same problem.
      I went to the website and filled out a customer service form, (not a support ticket), explaining the situation and asking what repeater/booster brand/model they recommended. The next day I got a call on my cell from an engineer who explained in no uncertain terms that they did not want me to install any sort of repeater/booster under any circumstances. They then asked if I was in the affected location at that moment, (I was), and while on the line did a bunch of tests confirming the problem, opened a ticket and said it should be fixed in two weeks and that they would keep the ticket open for me to call back if it wasn't any better.
      It turns out that no matter how small an area is affected they would rather fix it from their end than have someone installing some random repeater/booster as they apparently have no end of problems with people doing exactly that and screwing up the network! (Kudos to the poster who mentioned potential FCC issues above).
      Now we don't know how things will turn out yet, my reception is still just as bad, but it's been barely a week so we'll just have to wait and see.

      So the upshot of it is that if reception sucks in your area, ask them nicely what they recommend for third-party solutions and they just might get all excited and actually fix it themselves.

Re:You're going about this all wrong

[Dryanta]

You're correct. However, there is a lot of 'ground plane radiation' that eminates from the base of highly directional antennas, which is why there are big fences around cell phone towers. Provided that the antennas are directional enough, standing at the base of a macrocell even (normally 60m up) will give you killer gain (normally around 20-35 db, 5 bars) provided that the Fresnel zone (the area between the two antennas) is unobstructed by anything like vegetation, trees, cars, etc. and a clear line-of-sight is maintained.

I wasn't trying to be all elitist, you guys know more about *nix/databases/any number of obscure IT things than me... I know more about antennas and radio waves. Thats the fun of a forum!!! :)

Re:You're going about this all wrong

[RadioTV]

I am a television and radio broadcast technician and we maintain a broadcast tower. There are several reasons that there is a fence around the base of the tower.

• it keeps people from trying to climb the tower
• it keeps people away from possible falling debris (ice)
• wave guides are very sensitive - when we installed a new tower, any section of wave guide that hade a dent deeper than 1/32 of an inch was replaced
• transmitters use a lot of electricity and the transformers are usually inside the fence
• there is a lot of (non-ionizing) radiation given off - on our tower there is a TV antenna (connected to 4 transmitters), a radio antenna (connected to 4 transmitters), three cell sites, a couple microwave STLs (studio transmitter links), a police radio transmitter, and a local pager company

Someone with experience

[rosswil]

Recently the company I work for built two beautiful new office buildings with one minor drawback; They had large metal roofs that almost completely blocked cell phone signal inside. Many employees had to go outside the building to use their (company owned) cell phones. Our solution was to purchase a wireless repeater like you mentioned above. We went with the Digital Antenna(r) DA4000SBR. This is the small building repeater, they also have other versions available that cover less square footage. It was very easy to set up (mount and outdoor and indoor antenna) and improved signal quality from -85db to -62db (1 bar to 4 bars)over about 3500 sq.ft. Our employees are very happy now that they can use their cell phones inside. This unit can be purchased for around $455 from Talley Communications corp or almost any other wireless retailer.

Re:Maybe just switch providers...

[TubeSteak]

The problem is that contract lock-in is de rigeur in the cellular industry these days.

You can legally transfer your cell phone contract (sometimes with a fee that is smaller than the termination fee).

Here's an article with some advice on the process.

Note: You can keep your phone number

http://www.cellswapper.com/cellswapperv2/default.a spx
http://www.celltradeusa.com/
will help you find someone willing to take up your contract.

Re:May not solve your problem.

[drinkypoo]

Try a passive repeater. My gf had terrible reception in her house, she bought a $8.00 passive repeater for cars/windows, etc. and it added a bar or two to her reception on the front of the house. Which was the most important area to her. Being so cheap, it cant _hurt_ to try one..

What is a passive repeater? A pie pan?

(websearch)

Ah, here's what it is! It's an antenna hooked up to an antenna in an effort to get the signal out of your house. And look, there's some text next to the diagram!

Passive Repeater

You might think this would work but IT DOESN'T.

There is too little power from the phone and too much loss trying to span the gaps. It's kinda like plugging a power strip into itself.

See below for the completely "wireless" solution.

(http://www.criterioncellular.com/tutorials/homeof ficeantennas.html)

I have decided that it is most likely that you are a shill for a cellular equipment provider. I bet you think those little stickers will help protect you from BRAIN CANCER OH NOES! too.

It's very simple to understand why this won't work, and it's called Inverse-Square Law. Simply, the cellular phone is putting out only a couple tenths of a watt to begin with (maybe .4 watts max on a handheld) and only a tiny portion of that power will reach the receiving antenna. Even if you're right next to it you can probably only get 25% of the signal to reach the other antenna at the maximum.

Short form: this is stupid, buy an external antenna instead.

Re:because they aren't people

[MightyYar]

Interesting... if only politicians could figure this out, they could manipulate the and... oh, wait, nevermind.