Cell phone signal Booster ?

rhagfo wrote:


I totally understand the difference between signal strength and bandwidth.
I also have a WeBoost system in our trailer, and it will increase signal strength, but can’t improve bandwidth.
I can get great response time on two bars of signal, or timeouts with four bars due to lack of bandwidth for the particular cell tower and too many users on the tower.
I worked to a major athletic shoe company. If we had issues getting a high speed terrestrial connection installed in time we would use a cellular router to bring the store up and/or operate it on. One store in particular I could not get enough bandwidth during the day to get the computers loaded. I at the end of the second day came back at 10 pm and was able to load multiple systems at the same time, because fewer users meant more available bandwidth.
You can improve cell signal, but you can’t improve bandwidth that is controlled by the carriers.

You are mixing two different issues and calling it a bandwidth problem.

There is no way of you knowing how many "users" there are using the same cell tower service, period.

So in reality absolutely no way you can say without a doubt that you were experiencing not enough bandwidth.

However, what you were experiencing was just not enough signal to work correctly..

This is a problem when you are in a marginal signal area and as I mentioned, using an external booster MAY OR MAY NOT fix said problem even if it gets you a couple of more bars worth of signal.

The reason for this is the booster has to pickup that weak signal which may contain considerable amount of RF noise (RFI Radio Frequency Interference). That booster will AMPLIFY not only the weak cell signal but ALL of the RFI it sees on the input!

To make matters worse, the amplifier ADDS its' own INTERNAL GENERATED RF NOISE to the output. You MUST have enough signal over the noise level (S/N) in order to get a decent Internet speed.

As they say, GARBAGE IN, LOUDER (AMPLIFIED) GARBAGE OUT.

You have to have decent enough signal (with low background noise) to start with, 1 or 2 bars are not really decent for stable Internet use as you have found out, but don't call it not enough bandwidth (IE over crowded).

That in a nutshell is what you have run into, not over congested cell tower with not enough bandwidth.

The cellphone systems have ways to reroute users as long as there are a couple of towers near the users the system will switch between towers automatically and seamlessly. User is never aware of these handoffs.

Heck at my home, I am lucky to get 1 or 2 bars of signal on a sunshiny day using my cell for Internet it just barely works.. Add in rain or snow and the Internet no longer works for me even though the phone still makes and gets calls and still have 1 or 2 bars of signal. I can tell you that there is no way that the cell towers near me are "congested", very rural location, the population in the Borough 2 miles from me is about 1,000 and that is spread out over about .5 square miles. That is where the closest cell tower to me is.

If a cell tower cannot handle 1,000 people then the entire cell system is a total flop which is not true.

In reality, cell towers have multiple "channels", each channel handles multiple cell connections, weak signals to the tower may get moved to different channels as needed to get better S/N, channels can get reused (simultaneous use), how things get determined is how strong the tower receives your signal and the quality of the signal (S/N). Someone else connects and has much stronger signal or better S/N, your connection may get bumped to a different channel or lost.. At the same time the speed of your phone connection goes up or down with the strength of the cell tower signal over the noise level.

Boosters may or may not help, it is a toss up.

Digital RF transmission is finicky and fickle..

I would suggest reading up on how cellphones really work before calling a congestion problem..

Found a good "primer" on cellphone theory..

HERE that you might find enlightening.