Mobile signal booster

FWIW, this smells like another of those dodgy posts.

Depending on your network, some providers will give/sell you a device to route calls through your own broadband via a picocell.

My sister has one as her house is in a mobile phone ?not-spot? with abysmal signal strength on all networks.

If your network doesn?t have such devices, change to one that has.

Tim

They're getting more and more difficult to get nowadays

Yes, Wifi calling is the new way.

That is probably because "WiFi calling" works so much better as long as you have a good internet connection. The picocells typically have very short range and can be complex to set up. In the USA they have GPS receivers to restrict where they can be used and in Europe they use GSM receivers to try and determine their location by harvesting base station ids. John

and works very well.

The only thing that it doesn't work well for is reporting a landline or internet fault... My brother in law has almost no mobile signal at home.

Now that many phones support calling over Wifi the picocell offerings have become redundant. You might still get one second hand though.

Don't whatever you do buy one of the passive things to put your phone on like I once did. It attaches to a high gain antenna and is supposed to close couple the phone to it. Came from a reputable supplier but I noticed that they stopped selling it after too many complaints.

Nothing wrong the the yagi - it works fine on a Mifi pebble. Pointing is fiddly but it turns just barely connected to a solid high speed link.

Active (not simple passive) signal boosters are now legal, seem to cost about a grand though ...

We are using WhatsApp calling more and more.

Mike

and works *pretty* well,unless you have marginal reception when the stupidPhone? will always pick bad cellular over good wifi...

(i) it's 'michael adams' (ii) it's stupid enough to think that cell phones call each other directly without needing a base station

I've had that problem, but I have just found an app "Wifi Calling" which lets me set callig by Wifi as the priority.

Who knows but in my experience, the booster itself will not help unless its receiving antenna can get a good signal from the nearest cell and the phones affected. If that is not the case then you are wasting your money. Brian

Put it in aeroplane mode and it will ignore cellular signals. You just have to remember to enable it again when you go out. My home reception is pretty marginal so for best battery life I put it into Wifi only.

It helps save power not to have it go - no signal, "ET phone home" at maximum possible transmit power on a regular basis. My battery life app also shows effective signal level the correlation is very striking.

There are (at least) two sort of devices used.

Ones which have an external directional high gain cellular antenna and then rebroadcast it again in band inside the home and ones which do some sort of Internet redirection over your landline broadband eg

If that link actually works I will be amazed. Try this one or Google femtocell and Three.

They are fairly rare now and you do need to be on Three. I expect the other network operators have something similar hidden on a webpage.

O2 is the network with zero coverage where I live. Vodafone is the only one with coverage at a friends house. EE seems to be amongst the best.

You might, though it may be difficult/impossible to register it with the mobile network (They need to know where it is, so it selects the right Tx frequencies for your district).

The best solution is to select a network and phone that support WiFi calling, some networks require you to have bought the phone from them, others, (EE and Sky) don't care, if the phone supports it, it should work  .

I've been using iD with wifi calling (£6/month) for about a year now and it works perfectly well. Added bonus is battery life has increased considerably as I keep the phone in airplane mode when at home. Which is most of the time right now. I think you need to check your phone's compatible though.

Don't some phones have that facility built in to them? My Iphone seems to offer that option.