September 11, 2006
By MIKE WENDLAND
Detroit Free Press
I live out in one of those rapidly growing areas in Oakland County where the cell phone coverage can sometimes be a bit spotty.
Inside my house, there are certain rooms and locations where there just isn't enough of a signal to make a solid connection.
So when I heard about a Canadian company called Spotwave that was about to release a $399 system that boosts indoor wireless coverage, I couldn't wait to try it.
Called the Z1900, it consists of two gadgets. The first is a Network Access Unit that receives the signal from the closest cell tower to your location. It's about the size of a cable modem. The second is a much smaller Coverage Unit, about the size of a Cracker Jack box. It transmits what is supposed to be an improved signal to your cell phone.
The two gizmos are connected by a thin white cable 30 feet long. The bigger unit is meant to be mounted on an exterior wall. In the most extreme cases where coverage is really lousy, it should be mounted outside, on the roof or side of the house, with the cable snaking inside to the smaller unit.
Spotwave claims that if you have at least two bars of signal strength on your cell phone outside your house, the unit will work inside, increasing that to as much as five bars in a typical 2,000-square-foot house.
Alas, there are catches.
First of all, it only enhances voice and data in the PCS (1900 MHz) service band. In this area of southeastern Michigan , that means Sprint and T-Mobile. But the company says its device also works with different services like the EDGE data network run by Cingular and AT&T and the EVDO and 1XRTT data services run by Verizon, as well as GSM voice and CDMA.
Confused? Yeah, me too.
The instructions on the pre-production review unit Spotwave sent me promised a tool on the Spotwave Web site (www.spotwave.com) that would tell you what wireless providers the Z1900 would work with in your zip code. The tool wasn't operational when I checked last week. Company officials say it will be when the device goes on sale in October.
But because it was supposed to help with some of the services I use on my Verizon EVDO-capable Treo 700 and the EDGE network my Cingular BlackBerry 8700 works on, I figured I'd give it a try on those, as well as on Sprint.
I balked at the instructions that said to mount the Network Access Unit on a wall. My gear makes enough of a mess at my house and I knew there would be no way my wife was going to let me drill holes in the wall.
But I found a spot on a desk in front of a window in my home office where the Network Access Unit showed a solid blue light -- an indication that it's getting a solid signal from a cell tower. I draped the cable out of sight along the floor and used a desktop stand to hold the coverage unit across the room.
Then I checked my signal levels on my cell phones.
Nothing. There was no improvement. The Treo shows the marginal one bar it always gets inside my house. The Blackberry showed the same three bars.
But I then borrowed a Sprint phone from a friend. With the device powered off, there were two bars of signal strength. The moment of truth arrived -- I turned the phone off and the device on.
Then I powered up the Sprint phone again.
Voila! Five bars.
I wandered all over my house. In the lower level, where Sprint barely worked before, it dropped down to three bars. But everywhere else, even on my back deck, I got a solid four or five bars.
Just as advertised.
I'm impressed.
Copyright (c) 2006, Detroit Free Press
