Recently switched from a land line to a cellular phone, but coverage is kind of sporadic, and bars tend to escalate up and down, while staying in the same spot. I can have zero bars, or four bars without moving. Was wondering if anybody has ever tried one. While at my business, I really need for this phone to ring. I may have to switch back to a land-line if coverage doesn’t get any better than this. I have the Samsung Galaxy III with Sprint service which is I think compatible with some of these I’m looking at.The Wilson Sleek Dual Band for $99.95 seems to get good results, if the testimonials are real. Their other signal boosters and antennas are for sale here. Any other recommendations?
What kind did you get? I think I’m going to try the Wilson Sleek. Just got to make sure I get one compatible with my phone. Walmart and Amazon have them for $79.00. Most reviewers rate it very high, so maybe this will work for me.
I’m seeing mixed reviews on this stuff, but never heard of it before until you mentioned it. Now Sprint just got approved for their version too. It better work when it often costs more than the phone.
I was going to mention the microcell. My understanding of them is they plug into your computer. Your phone recognizes it as a tower, connects to it and you should get full strength. Then, everything gets transmitted through your internet connection.
I would talk to your provider about it. If your reception is that lousy, I think some people end up getting them for free since they would rather just hand you one of those then have you leave them for someone else since your phone is unusable at work or home.
Also note that the coverage available locally can be very different depending on your carrier. If you have some other people who get better reception than you do, find out which carrier they are using.
Some phones perform better than others, too.
Microcells are a really good solution to this problem. I haven’t looked into the signal boosters. If you have something that’s effectively working as a repeater - your phone works the same way, but then something external to it (and not held to your ear!) amplifies the signal, then it should be ok. If you have something that attaches to your phone, I’d be wary of it. It’s either not going to work, or it’s going to increase the power of the signal near your head. This could potentially be bad for your health. And the battery life of your phone.
I have the same problem at my home location. My cellphone only works in the kitchen (closest to the tower). But I have a different solution than using a microcell, booster or extra antenna. I have the cellphone number set to automatically transfer the call to my landline if there is no answer after 4 rings. Once transferred, it is just a normal, landline call, with much better fidelity and no worry about calls fading or being dropped. And the caller ID info gets transferred, too.
Only drawback is the number of rings before transfer cannot be changed (maybe other systems can), so I always tell people to ring more than 4 times to be sure of getting me.
I’ve got one of the more expensive Wilson booster/antenna combos and it works great. By my reckoning, I think having the external high-mount antenna is more important than having the booster box gizmo, so I don’t know of the $99 one will help all that much.
If you’re only using the booster for one location, the smart thing to do is probably to buy a booster from a place with a generous return policy (around here Best Buy stocks them), give it a try and if it doesn’t work return it and try a fancier one.
Thanks, I might do just that and head that way. Do they have the antenna as well?
No kiddin’, I’m learning this too. Even when I have four bars, I don’t always get to call out. I’m willing to try a few more things before I give up on it. If the antenna or signal booster doesn’t work, I’m going to go back to the land line, and sell my Samsung on e-bay. What their site coverage claims on their map, and what I actually get is quite different. I thought I did all of my homework to make a reasonable decision. I was wrong.
At least around here they do. The booster/antenna combo I got was about $300, although there’s another one that’s only $200 that also has the external antenna. They also stock that $99 one so it might be worth a try, especially since it’s not like you have to climb up on your roof to install it like the other ones. Also, note that Best Buy recently reduced their return policy from 30 to 15 days and you might want to double check that there isn’t some sort of weasely exception covering cell boosters.
Damn, don’t know if I want to pay that much for an antenna, even if it worked. I’m going to go see if I can find somebody at Best Buy that might be able to help me. Thanks for your help.
Before I dropped my land-line, I did the reverse. Always had my customers call the land-line first, then when out would have it forward to my cell phone. I’m going to try this Wilson Sleek and/or antenna, and if things don’t improve fairly quick, will end this craziness once and for all.
Picked up one of the Wilson Sleek 4G’s at Best Buy that the salesman said was for my phone. They immediately took $50.00 off since that was the Amazon price, and said they will always match their price. The box appears to show it is for my phone. On a switch, and in the manual, it only lists it for Verizon, and then another switch for ATT. It doesn’t bother to elaborate if it can be used for Sprint or others. When I checked on one of these at e-bay, the person said I had to use a different set-up for Sprint phones compared to ATT.
I’ve taken it in and out of the cradle a half a dozen times or so, and have noticed zero difference with it plugged in to my USB port, and also the antenna hooked up too. I’m sure this must work for some, but for me it looks like a bust. I’ll call tech support Monday, and see what they say. Best Buy said I had 14 days to return it if it still doesn’t work.
I eventually got somebody to pick up in tech support at Wilson. He said I had the right model. After about five minutes on the phone, he gave me some things to try. I spent another hour on it or so, doing the suggestions he said to try: move the switch from ATT to Verizon to see if that made a difference. He recommended moving my antenna closer to the window. Then he recommended me locating the antenna outside to various locations. Several dozen times of taking it in and out of the cradle showed zero difference in bars. So I did take it back today.
I looked into the microcells (thanks for those suggesting this) some more after the Wilson Sleek being a total bust; for me, anyway. I’ll need more time to digest it all.
I’ve learned the hard way that most cell phone providers can take your land line number now and put it into a cell phone. The bad news is, the cellular carriers won’t allow you to put that number back into a land line if you choose to do so. At least Sage phone company said they couldn’t take my Straight Talk number back even if it had been my land line number before for 16 years. They claim Straight Talk won’t release it. I’m going to call ATT tomorrow to see if maybe they can do something. I’ve made a bad business decision that is going to cost me plenty in customers not getting ahold of me, and since my number is already locked into the yellow pages for next year, there is nothing I can do about it now. Maybe next year, I’ll see about getting a new number for a land line. I hope others with businesses won’t make the same mistake I have made.
Does anybody know why the bars fluctuate up and down from zero bars to five bars, without even moving from the same location? Are the cell towers purposely doing this? Nearly all days have been nice weather wise. If I’m reading the tower location right, I’m actually only about 4 miles from the cell tower, and I’m slightly up on a hill in a rural area which is pretty much grasslands, no heavy tree cover.
Sometimes, yes…it’s intentional from the towers. They actively load balance the number of devices on each cell, and the power transmitting for each one. You may be getting bounced to a different cell.
You could also be impacted by weather, or a train going through the line of site…or something else. RF is really complicated. Or, as a former co-worker (and RF engineer) used to say…it’s black magic.
I have one of the AT&T microcells – AT&T offered it to me, for free, a couple of years ago (I must be lucky or something). It plugs into the router for my cable modem, rather than into one of the computers. Other than that, it pretty much works as you describe. (And, thus, obviously, if the power goes out in the house, or my cable internet goes out, the microcell goes down.)
Only phones which I specifically give access to (on a special web page on AT&T’s site) can use the microcell, and only AT&T phones can do so. I think that it allows up to 15 numbers to be assigned to it; between the phones which my wife and I use, and a few of our friends who visit frequently, we’ve assigned 9 or 10 numbers to it.
While you’re in the house, it works very well; we usually have a very strong signal through it (compared to very spotty coverage otherwise). The signal is strong enough that it extends out into our yard, but we have a pretty small yard.
