Do cellphone boosters work for RV camping with poor signal?
I was wondering what effect a cellphone booster would have on signal while camping in mountains with only one bar? Any recommendations?
Forum Discussion
wa8yxm wrote:
Poor signal (IE one bar) yes.. NO signal. no.
Also some work only on voice but may not work well with data
And some .. Well it might or might not work with your phone and or carrier.
At the frequencies used for cell phone HEIGHT IS MIGHT. so the higher you can get the OUTSIDE antenna on your booster...... the better. as a rule.
Also you can get a directional outdoor antenna from some places and ain the thing.
I'll agree on everything but NO signal. I've used boosters for 20 years or so and there are quite a few places we camp where the phone will show "no signal" on the display but I can end up getting several bars with a booster.
When your phone tries to connect to a tower, it sends out a signal. IF the tower sees a strong enough signal it will then start the process of connecting and adjusting power. Typical phones broadcast with around 500mw of power IIRC. Now with a booster, the booster can broadcast with around 3-5 Watts of power, so can be possible for the booster to get a strong enough signal to a tower to initiate and complete the process to enable communication.
Now once connected, as mentioned, in very weak signal areas you may find you get voice only, or voice and text, but no internet or ability to send text with images etc.
And don't use the "bars" on the display to tell you much about the real signal quality. In the phone setting menue there should be a way to see actual signal strength in db. -80db or less is very good, -100 about the point where you may run into issues with texts etc. -115 or so, gets real marginal.
