Cell signal booster for rural folks

[GilpinGuy]

Question:
Any of you folks out in the sticks use a cell phone signal booster? I'm looking for a recommendation for a good one.

Details:
Our signal here is OK at best. 3 bars is rare. The norm is 1 or 2, but sometimes we have nada. Most of the time you can make calls and text ok, but sometimes it's pretty bad and it gets frustrating. Forget about streaming anything.

We've decided that our 13 yo boy should have a cell phone now. He's going to use data like a madman. Since we are on satellite internet (sucks, btw) I thought that getting a boost of the cell signal might help. We have unlimited data on our cell plan, so no problem there.

Any suggestions?

[nzachman]

One year ago my wife and I sold our home in Colorado Springs. We moved back to the farm that she grew up on.
The farm is in a very rural area, the county is 1,000 square miles with less than 2,200 people.
Local phone “CO-OP” has land lines “no fiber optic to us” plus 10 mb satellite internet.
We have had our phone plan with Verizon for 20 years in Colorado, we did not want to change numbers or service.
Verizon has towers in the county but we have no signal at the farm. Zero to one bar inside is normal.
Once we got satellite internet we hooked up the signal booster, it maintains 4-5 bar strength inside the house.
Set up takes a while, has to lock in GPS plus gain internet signal through the Cat 6 line from the router.
Without the booster we could not make phone calls inside the house.
We have to use a WiFi on our phones when inside the house, no LTE or 3G from the cell network makes it inside the house.
Phone well work, no internet data though.
This is the booster we have. I’m sure it’s been updated since we bought it.
https://www.verizonwireless.com/accessories/samsung-network-extender-scs-2u01/

Kinda tough to describe, hope it helped?

Nathan Z
Bucklin, Ks

[Grant H.]

I use one of these in my house, and it's very beneficial. I moved my home office to the basement, and routinely had call dropping issues, till I bought and installed one of these. https://www.amazon.com/weBoost-Phone-Signal-Booster-Office/dp/B00RHMFQSA/ref=sr_1_25_sspa?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1516027202&sr=1-25-spons&keywords=weboost&psc=1

My company also has installed the much larger/more capable options for several large office buildings here in CO.

There are cheaper ones out there, but weBoost/Wilson is about the best name in the game right now.

[Mtneer]

We use the Verizon booster to go from 0 to 4 bars. It plugs into the internet router with an ethernet cable and has a satellite antennae (with a long cable) that goes in a window. Set up the booster near the center of the house for best coverage.

[NFATrustGuy]

I'm pretty sure the Verizon "boosters" just use your internet feed to convert your cell phone service to a VOIP arrangement. If you have poor or nonexistent internet service, the Verizon unit won't help.

What you're going to need is a repeater that uses a high gain directional antenna on the exterior of your home. You aim the antenna at the strongest cell tower you can find. The antenna is connected to the repeater which then acts as your own personal cell tower in your house. They take a little tweaking, but they can work very well. I know of one house in northern Colorado that has an underground shooting range. The company who installed all the low voltage wiring for the house also installed multiple repeaters to provide cell signal deep underground.

As someone else mentioned, Wilson makes good stuff.

[Grant H.]

I'm pretty sure the Verizon "boosters" just use your internet feed to convert your cell phone service to a VOIP arrangement. If you have poor or nonexistent internet service, the Verizon unit won't help.

What you're going to need is a repeater that uses a high gain directional antenna on the exterior of your home. You aim the antenna at the strongest cell tower you can find. The antenna is connected to the repeater which then acts as your own personal cell tower in your house. They take a little tweaking, but they can work very well. I know of one house in northern Colorado that has an underground shooting range. The company who installed all the low voltage wiring for the house also installed multiple repeaters to provide cell signal deep underground.

As someone else mentioned, Wilson makes good stuff.

Correct. The Samsung/Verizon boosters require good internet to be useful. They also have to be close to a window to get the GPS antenna outside.

The Wilson boosters don't require internet. Just some cables to be run. I changed out the little desk antenna that they include for an indoor ceiling mounted antenna, and I used LMR-400 instead of their shitty RG6. Lower loss and I have all the tools to make my own cables...

[Monky]

I had one at my house years ago... I get shit signal.. like 0-1 bar at my house. One day it just stopped working, but they have wifi calling now available on most phones so I just use that at the house.

I've got an ATT and Verizon one at the bosses' house. He's just a few miles down the road and it's the same thing. You'd think the rich assholes would want good cell service, but they ban towers because they're not pretty..

The ATT def works better... the verizon is very limited in range in his house. Weaker unit maybe?

We 'had' one of the signal boosters that just used an antenna and it worked OK..

[def90]

I install the Wilson and other boosters in homes and businesses once in a while.. They won't make an already bad signal better. What they will do is transmit a good outside signal to the interior of a building that does not get reception due to construction materials and so on. They do that quite well. I installed a Wilson system at a house on top of a mtn near Centennial Cone Park and it transmits the bad outside signal to the inside of the house at least where there was no signal inside of the house before. Making a call without dropping and so on is still spotty.

If you have a bad signal outside and you have decent internet the Verizon or whatever carrier internet based boosters are going to work better for you. If you already have wifi in your house you may want to check and see if your phone does wifi calling.