Looking for a good cell phone booster
We are wanting to camp at the local national forest and the campground is about 5 miles from the nearest cell signal. Will a booster help with this? If so, what do you recommend? We have service with ...
Forum Discussion
Without knowing more about the terrain and how the cell tower antennas are oriented the best answer is "It depends".
one key is NOT distance but terrain. 5 miles with straight line of sight to a Cell antenna aimed in your direction, boosters may do an excellent job.
5 miles down in a valley covered by trees with the cell antenna pointed away from you. Well...... not much you can do.
I have wilson boosters in my trailers, not the sleek etc. but the 3G full power booster and a yagi antenna. In one location, I'm only a few miles away from a cell tower but we are down in a valley and the cell base station antenna is pointed north south and we are due west. can't get a signal. In another case I'm almost 10 miles away, but on a hill with some trees but mostly line of sight to a cell tower and can get 3 bars, good enough for voice/text but marginal for data.
So far I haven't gone to a 4G booster. The reason, my experience is that by the time I'm remote enough to be needing a booster I'm in a 3G area anyway with no 4G signal anywhere within 50 miles or more. In a few years, likely a different story as the majority of the country will be 4G at least and 3G will have gone by the wayside.
And, contrary to many posts, I've often competely lost cell coverage several miles before our destination and still get good coverage with the booster. Partly because I have a CDMA phone (Verizon) . CDMA towers will adjust the transmit power for a given channel once it recieves a signal from a phone to maintain a certain SN ratio and error rate. So, when you go through a booster, if the outgoing signal can get recieved by the tower with acceptable SN ratio, it will then transmit and adjust it's output signal power level to maintain the desired SN ratio to the phone amp.
Don't know if ATT/ GSM systems do anything similar or not. I did design work the first test systems on the very first CDMA comercial phone systems for Qualcom, very interesting technology.
And because voice and data are on different frequencies, you may end up with good voice but limited/no data. Voice is at a lower frequency less affected by terrain, while data is a much higher frequency and more terrain/antenna sensistive. Especially with 4G
one key is NOT distance but terrain. 5 miles with straight line of sight to a Cell antenna aimed in your direction, boosters may do an excellent job.
5 miles down in a valley covered by trees with the cell antenna pointed away from you. Well...... not much you can do.
I have wilson boosters in my trailers, not the sleek etc. but the 3G full power booster and a yagi antenna. In one location, I'm only a few miles away from a cell tower but we are down in a valley and the cell base station antenna is pointed north south and we are due west. can't get a signal. In another case I'm almost 10 miles away, but on a hill with some trees but mostly line of sight to a cell tower and can get 3 bars, good enough for voice/text but marginal for data.
So far I haven't gone to a 4G booster. The reason, my experience is that by the time I'm remote enough to be needing a booster I'm in a 3G area anyway with no 4G signal anywhere within 50 miles or more. In a few years, likely a different story as the majority of the country will be 4G at least and 3G will have gone by the wayside.
And, contrary to many posts, I've often competely lost cell coverage several miles before our destination and still get good coverage with the booster. Partly because I have a CDMA phone (Verizon) . CDMA towers will adjust the transmit power for a given channel once it recieves a signal from a phone to maintain a certain SN ratio and error rate. So, when you go through a booster, if the outgoing signal can get recieved by the tower with acceptable SN ratio, it will then transmit and adjust it's output signal power level to maintain the desired SN ratio to the phone amp.
Don't know if ATT/ GSM systems do anything similar or not. I did design work the first test systems on the very first CDMA comercial phone systems for Qualcom, very interesting technology.
And because voice and data are on different frequencies, you may end up with good voice but limited/no data. Voice is at a lower frequency less affected by terrain, while data is a much higher frequency and more terrain/antenna sensistive. Especially with 4G
