Cellphone Carriers Try To Control Signal Boosters

digitaldc writes "[Repeaters], which cost from $250 to $1,000, depending on how much they increase a signal, work by first capturing cell signals through an external antenna, ideally affixed to the roof of a dwelling. A coaxial cable then transmits the signal inside the house to an amplifier and internal antenna, which strengthen and retransmit it to cellphones... In March, CTIA-The Wireless Association, which represents cellular service providers, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission demanding stricter regulation of signal boosters."

Comments

Paywalled

[MetalliQaZ]

I clicked through Google news to get it "free"... http://news.google.com/news/search?q=stricter+regulation+of+signal+boosters

Re:Paywalled

[CityZen]

Because news sites *want* search engines like Google to see their content, so that people searching for stuff will be directed to them. And they want the people following links from Google to come back. So they try follow the drug dealer's model: we'll give you a bit for free, so that you'll come back and pay for more later. Of course, smart people figure out how to not pay ever, but that's only a small percentage of viewers.

Re:Does not supprise me.

[TWX]

An old ham radio saying is all an amplifier does is amplify crap.

That may be true if the device is solely placed where the signal is poor, the tuner is inadequate, the antenna is bad, and the amplifier has nothing to work with, but the solutions that I've seen nullify many of these problems.

These devices have two parts. One part, located ideally outside, high up, talks to the cell company. the other part, located where the poorest signal is normally, talks to the cell phones. On top of that, these devices have much larger antennas than the phones do, and with more size they can also have better radio tuners. So, you're not amplifying crap, you're getting a better signal and forwarding it to another device that is in an area that can't get the original.

Re:Can't read article.

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

No, they DON'T like boosters.

this is a fundamental issue in the way wireless communications works, when you stand in one spot in a city within range of three towers, your cell phone attempts to modulate itself onto a portion of the spectrum that will allow it to speak. This in turn means that all three towers now can hear you.
because all three towers can hear you, but only one is responsible for carrying your traffic the others make that channel unavailable to the people within range of the other two towers. the only thing the towers can do is reduce power to the quadrant the handset is in, allowing people closer to the tower to use it at the same time. even THIS however is limited: if the MobileStation can still reach the other two towers, they can't reduce power far enough to allow anybody else to use those channels.

once you install powered signal boosters, your cell phone now may be able to reach twenty towers. those towers each have a limited number of 'slots' available for users to use, (infact the number of GSM channels is currently around 32, though through timeframing of each channel there are 7-14frames per channel/second) meaning that you effectively are now multiplying your capacity based on how many towers you can hit.

the issue here is NOT with people that are in small towns/remote location, telco's are happy to let people put up their own repeaters to enlarge the telco's network at no cost to the telco. the issue they have is that people in downtown apartments with lead paint think that by hitting every tower in 15 square blocks just so they can repeat it indoors for one customer is a good thing.

by using the air to communicate: you have to learn to share it with others. we only have one global collection of air for which EMR can radiate.

Re:Can't read article.

[Shakrai]

because all three towers can hear you, but only one is responsible for carrying your traffic the others make that channel unavailable to the people within range of the other two towers

This is a overly simplistic explanation. GSM uses frequency hopping for the uplink (i.e: phone to tower) channel to mitigate this sort of interference. The other towers don't perceive your phone as anything other than random background noise. CDMA uses a different mechanism (spread spectrum using a pseduo-random code) to achieve the same results, plus it has the added benefit of being able to do soft-handoffs, i.e: your phone is literally talking to multiple towers at the same time.

The whole point of digital technology is to enable multiple users to share the same channel. Repeaters don't really defeat this. What they can do is increase noise along with signal, usually to the detriment of any phones within range of them. The carriers are rightfully peeved about them because they've spent billions of dollars to license the spectrum that they use and were supposed to have exclusive rights to deploy devices that transmit on that spectrum.