Cel phone reception

HGM · Jan 19, 2006

I've got a question for you guys about your cel phone experience. Riptides gave a post mentioning antenna boosters and got me thinking.

I live somewhat in the country and have poor reception at the house. I've been with Verizon for several years and have good luck with them as they are the most reliable service I have found here but at home its weak.. My question is about these boosters for cel signal, do they work? Does one work better than others? With all honesty, I could drop the hardline if the cel was reliable here. Any suggestions would be appreciated..

RedRocker · Jan 19, 2006

I use an external antenna on my Jeep for boonie travel, maybe mount one on the house??

EddieWalker · Jan 19, 2006

When I moved to Texas I had Sprint and my ex had Verizon. They both worked fine in Tyler, but were useless out at the land. This suprised me since the land is only half a mile off Interstate 20.

My realtor had AT&T and got good reception with them, so when my contract expired, I switched over. They were great until the merger with Cingular. After that I started having problems. Missed calls and static were the most common. When I asked about the problem, I was told my phone was the cause and I needed to buy a new one because of the merger. My contract was just about up, so I held off on that. I was told by a friend that the merger of the two companies resulted in two different levels of equipment. The Cingular stuff wasn't as good as the AT&T stuff, so they were using the lesser quality trasmitters so everything would work. In time they plan to upgrade everything, but until then, I was going to have poor service.

My girlfriend has Alltel. It worked great on my land, so that's who I have now.

My long winded point is that different carriers offer different levels of service in different areas and you really need to try them all to see if one works there.

Eddie

Bird · Jan 19, 2006

( The Cingular stuff wasn't as good as the AT&T stuff )

Are you sure you didn't get that backwards? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif We've never had anything but Cingular; started back when it was Southwestern Bell Mobile. When we first got it in 1999, it was a weak signal inside the house down in the country, but OK if we went out in the yard. And on our first trip to West Virginia after we got it, there were several dead spots. However, all that was corrected several years ago and we've had no complaints with Cingular. My two brothers had AT&T and they were satisfied with it, then after the merger had a few problems, but those got worked out pretty quickly and now they're happy with Cingular.

And of course with my limited (well . . . nearly non-existent) technical knowledge, I have no idea whether one company is actually better than the other. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Panache · Jan 19, 2006

I had Alltel until they refused to credit my bill for a payment I had the canceled check for. They said they were NOT going to credit me until they figured where they wrongly credited the amount. Wrong!. Two days after they finally got my account straightened out I changed to Cingular but I have a tri-mode phone that works where the digital only(new) phones don't. Alltel's technical quality was #1 but their customer service is good old #2.

CT_Tree_Guy · Jan 19, 2006

Straight from the "For what it's worth department":

I had an interesting conversation about two weeks ago with a VERY knowledegable, fairly high-level IT guy from Cingular/ATT. The most interesting thing that he told me was that when Cingular and AT&T merged, their existing technologies were much more compatible than those of Sprint and Nextel, who also recently merged. As a result, their coverage areas expanded relatively rapidly as the two systems were merged. Nextel and Sprint, on the other hand, will be much slower in merging their two systems due to the incompatibility issues.

I currently use Nextel, but not for long. I am getting sick and tired of Cingular users being able to make and receive calls in my shop, while my Nextel phone registers nary a single bar. In the meantime, maybe I'll keep looking into some sort of antenna/signal booster that I can mount on the roof of my shop, but in the past I haven't had much luck getting past the "blank stare" stage when I have broached the question to a variety of people in the industry.

It sure is frustrating not being able to place a simple phone call whenever you want to in the year 2006. Buck Rogers must be spinning in his grave. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

John

GaryQWA · Jan 19, 2006

One of the easiest and best ways to improve cellphone, wireless networking etc. 'coverage', is a booster antenna. I have a very old Motorola bag phone with a rubber duckie type antenna on it. That antenna is removable and I connect a magnetic base (ground plane) external antenna to the phone that I place on the roof of my van. That gets me coverage in many areas an ordinary cell phone would have no signal strength in at all. Also there are non-magnetic (ground plane) antennas for fiberglas roofs etc..

If your cell phone allows connection of an external antenna (small plug like for a mic or speaker), you can do the same.

My laptop computers (WI-FI) has the same capability, if you buy the pcmcia card that allows connecting an external antenna to it. And there are much more powerful cards, up to 200mw compared to the normal 20-30mw cards. The card is actually a radio transceiver.

Here's a link to one of the best web sites for all things cell phone.

http://www.alternativewireless.com/cellular-antennas/

Here's a site about WI-FI networking.

http://www.cantenna.com/

Many more can be found with a google search for cellphone booster antenna or change it to wi-fi booster antenna.

Gary

goaliedad · Jan 19, 2006

As many have pointed out- an external antenna is the answer. I would suggest you talk to a two-way radio shop in the area, to see what is available for your phone. Most of the cellular dealers have limited technical knowledge beyond, if it don't work, it must be a bad phone. Also, many of the cellular companies do not want boosters used, as it messes with thier systems.

As for the comparisions of brand x and brand y- it is all dependent on location. I was in the wireless industry for a long time and we always told our customers that every system has bad spots- it's just a matter of how many and where. If it hits your house- that's bad. If it's a two mile stretch of road, well maybe not so bad. As companies merge, and upgrade to new levels of technology things get really messy- where it use to work it doesn't, where it didn't- it might.

My advice is try the external antenna. If you're thinking of changing companies, ask everybody you know what their experience has been. Ask to demo the phones if it is important that you have coverage in a certain area. If the company won't do a demo- make sure you have a full refund return option in a defined period of time.

Best of luck

Bird · Jan 19, 2006

( very old Motorola bag phone )

Do they still make those? /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif I'd certainly agree that better antenna makes for better reception, but I don't think we'd have any need for it now-a-days; haven't had a problem with reception in a long time. And like a lot of cell phone users, I suppose, we've had one for 7 years and we're on our 3rd instrument. The first was a Nokia; nothing wrong with it when we replaced it with a Motorola, partly because a hard of hearing old man could hear better on the new Motorola, but mostly because of the little built in camera. Incidentally, the Cingular sales lady told me to take 2 or 3 different ones outside and try them out to decide which I liked best. Then when I picked one, she asked if I'd like to keep it over the weekend to use before deciding whether to buy it. And this 3rd one is another Motorola; nothing wrong with the one we replaced, but my wife wanted that Bluetooth hands free wireless gadget you can hang on your ear (I'll have to admit it does work great /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif) and this one has the camera that will also do short videos. I sure hope they don't come out with any more new features that my wife likes. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

goaliedad · Jan 19, 2006

bird- you can bet they will have something new the wife will want, real soon!

you're right about the bag phones- alot of companies will not even activate them anymore- assuming you can find one