?Has anybody experimented with using a signal booster / repeater / bi-amp / directional antenna(s) for the iPhone 4 on AT&T.
Doesn't matter if the phone is in the carry case, pocket, or how I hold it, most of the time it reports NO SERVICE, occasionally it will get enough service to ring but can't conduct a call until I go outside and find a sweet spot.
While their online coverage maps claim to have average signal strength
at my work place, the iphone 4 reports "NO SERVICE". Several other AT&T users have the same/simular results, having to go outside and search for the signal to use the phone. Verison & Sprint also claim decent coverage there but it isn't true either. The only thing that works there is Nextel because we have a Nextel site on the property, oh it would be nice to have the iphone on Nextel.I doubt AT&T will resolve the coverage any time soon so I'm looking for alternative solutions.
iPhone Booster
What prevents anyone from buying unlocked iPhone 4 and using Nextel voice and data connection?-----
T-Mobile and Cingular use GSM, while Sprint and Verizon Wireless use CDMA. Nextel uses another technology called iDEN,
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Are you talking about lack of signal strength at your home?
I bought an AT&T microcell
last summer and have been really happy with it. I could only get 1 bar or nothing, usually, at my house. Now I have 5 bars constantly and never have a dropped call here.They gave me a $100 rebate which I used to pay down my bill, so the microcell cost $100 less than the advertised price. Don't know whether the rebate is still available, though.
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I looked at that in the store when I got the phone, seems to me it requires an internet connection and they still charge you minutes & or data when you use it and yet you have to supply the internet to it.
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/3gmicrocell/
Also calls will not transfer to it, you can start calls on it and transfer to a cell tower but not from cell tower to it. It obviously has some limitations and you don't get any cost savings using it.
Since this is at my work place, connecting to the company network is not allowed so this is not an option.
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Yes, you're correct about all those things. You can pay a $20 monthly fee for a plan that puts all the minutes you use onto it, but I cancelled that because I don't use all my minutes ever anyway. And it bugged me that I had to pay to get a decent signal when I feel that AT&T
should be providing that as part of the service I pay for.But after years of never having a good signal at home, when they offered the $100 rebate I bought it and I'm not sorry.
At your office, though, this clearly isn't an option.
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I agree, they should be providing a good signal as part of the package. I've never used my minutes either, of course its hard to without a signal. Its nice that the microcell works for you.
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You folks keep talking about that rebate but you never mention that the rebate
is only if you sighn up for the unlimited minutes plan!! Visit AT&T
for all thereal information.
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Yes, I did sign up for the unlimited minutes plan, but the guy who sold it to me told me that I could just keep it for a month and then cancel and still get the rebate, so that's what I did, and the rebate came. So it cost me $20 but I still got the $80 back. He even implied that I could cancel before a month was over but I was slow and didn't get around to it!
Probably not every salesperson would admit that, but mine did!
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If you know how to make yagi or log periodic antennas - there is the old passive reflector trick. You use two antennas, point one at the cell tower, hook it up to the second antenna and point it into your house. It worked for people in a valley behind a mountain from TV stations, they would get together and place two antennas on top of the mountain and bounce signals into the valley for everybody. No reason why it shouldn't work for cell signals, too. There are a lot of antenna design calculators on the web, materials would be really cheap, antennas really small at 2.4GHz.
I'm about to do it, because my house is a new subdivision pretty far from the cell tower, my daughter complains of dead zones in her room. When I get it working, I suppose I could post a web site with construction details.
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It might work in some applications. Making antennas is not a problem, a piece of wood or PVC or Plastic and some coat hanger wire to make a beam is fine.
You might also just look at wilson electronics for their amps and antennas.
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where you speaking of home or work?
If work, does your building have a metal roof? If so the answer would be repeaters with an antenna outside. You should be able to find them for about $400 each, but you will need one for GSM and one for CDMA. If it is a warehouse with steel racking you may need more.
Nothing will help for steel roofing except a repeater. There is nothing the service provider can do to penetrate metal. If you have a stucco house, the wire mesh used to hold the stucco to the walls can act as a Faraday cage and cause the same problem.
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Work place its big, several buildings, big company.
Nextel works fine there, have a tower on the property, would be nice if AT&T
did also.My chances of getting the company to do repeaters is most likely slimmer than slim to none.
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http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/
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I have had some good experience with some BDA (Bi-Directional Amplifier) but unfortunately they were for Nextels. However the principle is the same.
CSI - Cellular Specialties Inc do a google search for them. I am not 100% sure if they have one for GSM / EDGE / UMTS but its worth a look.
The other good thing is this would provide wide area in building coverage for all employees on the network,
Our BDA in the building for Nextel also enhanced other 800mhz freqs so when ever local Police or Fire guys came in for service their 800 portables worked great. LOL but that's another story..
Just make sure its professionally installed and the carrier is notified. The newer BDA units are self regulating to make sure there is no system interference. But they do work.
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