January 2, 2007
BY TED NEEDLEMAN
Investor's Business Daily
Cell phones are terrific communications and productivity tools — except when you can't get service.
As ubiquitous as these terrific little devices are, cellular carriers can't keep up with the demand for ever-expanding service and often fall behind in building new towers.
The result is poor reception in many places, including your home or office. Fortunately, you don't have resort to moving or finding a new job to improve service.
With as little as a few hundred dollars and a little elbow grease, you can beef up your cell phone signal in poorly covered areas by installing a cell phone repeater, or booster.
A cell phone repeater uses an outside antenna to pick up a weak signal from the cell phone carrier's tower, carry it to a second antenna inside your home or office, and rebroadcast it to your phone.
It reverses the process when the cell phone transmits a signal. The result is an increase in signal strength at the cell phone — more bars on the display and a clearer conversation less likely to be dropped.
There are a number of cell phone repeaters on the market. IBD tested three. Which kind you need depends on what carrier you are using and what kind of coverage, in square feet, you are looking for.
Before proceeding, we offer the following cautions:
So before you buy, take a walk around your property, gazing at your cell phone, and verify that you have at least this degree of service outside. If you have only a single bar, a cellular repeater might work, but it won't work well.
The second caveat is that cellular repeaters for Nextel's iDen phones are different from those for other carriers' phones.
Nextel's network frequencies are different from those of other carriers, and the repeaters are a lot more expensive.
We tested one repeater for Nextel and two for Sprint and T-Mobile.
The Nextel repeater was the SpotCell 2500xe from privately held SpotWave. This device starts at $2,995 and can cover 25,000 square feet or more.
Ours was professionally installed with the outside antenna attached to the tripod of a satellite dish on our roof and the inside antenna mounted on a wall in our basement. But you could install it yourself if you don't mind working on a ladder.
Once the unit was positioned for maximum signal strength, we obtained four bars of service in most of the house, where Nextel service had been absent before.
SpotWave also makes repeaters for other carriers and for home and small office use.
The Z1900 is a $299 unit for PCS systems such as Sprint, Cingular and T-Mobile. It's intended for do-it-yourself installation, though the company can refer you to an installer if you would rather have someone else set it up.
We had a bit less success with this model, as we could not reliably get two bars of Sprint service outside the house. Sometimes we got two or three bars of service inside the house, sometimes no service at all.
Our third repeater was Wi-Ex's zBoost Dual-Band model, a $399 unit that works with most cellular carriers (except Nextel).
A single-band model for PCS or other cellular carriers is available for $299.
This unit was exceptionally easy to install. Just place the main antenna unit near a window where you get an acceptable signal level, and connect this with the included cable to the base unit. A light on the antenna helps you find the right placement.
As with the SpotWave unit, we had modest success — we were never able to get more than one bar of service at the exterior of our test site.
Still, our success with the SpotWave 2500 proves that a cellular repeater is a great idea to extend or improve cellular service.
Just keep in mind that all of the units need at least a minimum level of signal strength to deliver an acceptable boost in performance.
