Your new apartment can be perfect : great location, all the space you need and more. But then you go to make a phone call and you discover : no cell phone service. Your apartment may be a cell phone dead zone. That situation is bad enough if you also have a landline, but if you rely primarily on your cell phone, no reception can be a major issue.
No service isn’t exactly a reason to break your lease, but living a dead zone can create some problems. There are a few steps you can take to make the situation more tolerable. You can come up with several approaches to make sure you don’t miss important phone calls: if expecting a call on your cell phone (office number) you can either forward the call to your home phone, sit in the car on the street to take the call, or sit outside on your porch. Otherwise, you can either make all calls from home phone or from your car when you are out and about driving.
Forwarding your cell phone to your home phone number is generally your most reliable bet for making sure you don’t miss any calls to your cell phone. Beyond the forwarding option, you may have considered a cellular repeater. Cell phone repeaters act as amplifiers for cell phones. Most of the repeaters on the market aren’t exactly a good deal. And every time the technology changes — every few years, lately — the current types of repeaters become obsolete. But in some situations, it can be worth paying for a new cellular repeater.
Beyond these options, the only way to get cell phone service in some places is demolish the building and start from scratch. I doubt your landlord will go for that approach !
“Wilson’s (801212) mobile amplifier kit, is an all new product designed for any mobile application. If you work on the road, commute through dead cell zones, or just experiencing poor cellular signal, here is a product that will solve your problem. This product is manufactured by Wilson Electronics, or also known as Wilson Cellular. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Wilson Electronics is a leader in the wireless communications industry for over 40 years. They design and manufacture a wide variety of amplifiers, antennas and related components that significantly improve cellular signal reception and transmission in both mobile and in building applications. With the (801212) mobile amplifier kit, you can improve your cell phone and data card performance when you are always on the move. Whether you are using it in your car, truck, RV, SUV, or boat, Wilson’s (801212) will increase your bars and give you the signal you need to stay connected. [...] To sum it up, based on the research and tests performed, Wilson’s Mobile Wireless Dual-Band Amplifier Kit (801212) has proven to be a great product that really works. Before this item was used, my cell phone was only getting one signal bar, and after the amplifier was set up my signal increased to four bars.”
Reviewer : Naila S.
I was cruising on the Long Island Expressway, talking to my friend on my iPhone about critical details for the final paper of our class. As her voice started to fade along with the signal on my phone, I knew what I needed: Wilson Electronics’ iBooster, a cell phone signer amplifier. I plugged my phone into the iBooster, redialed my friend’s number, and, lo and behold, the call was even better than before!
The Wilson iBooster, designed to boost cell phone reception on both second and third generation iPhones, improves call quality, reduces the number of dropped calls, and increases data rates. It even improves signal in “dead zones.”
In the box, there is an amplifier cradle to hold the phone, an external mini-magnet antenna that goes on the roof of the car, a cigarette lighter adapter for power, an adapter to hold the iPhone with the case, mounting clips with several mounting options, an installation guide, and a one-year limited warranty. The setup is pretty simple, and the amplifier can be moved from vehicle to vehicle. Though it is designed primarily for use in a car, the iBooster can also be used in a building.
The Wilson iBooster’s box and website boast of many things that sound great, but what does that all really mean for you? It means that with the iBooster, the quality of the call will be noticeably better, and your signal will rarely drop below four bars. You won’t have to worry about dropped calls or dead zones. You can charge your phone in the car (though there is a switch to turn off the charger so you don’t drain the battery of your car), and you can listen to music through your car’s system with an audio input. With a “plug and play” design, the iBooster is very easy to use.
On the downside, the iBooster always needs a power source, so it can only be used in your car or near an outlet inside a building. In addition, the wire on the external antenna goes from the hood of the car and through the door. The setup for this is pretty basic, and the wire doesn’t get in your way, but the length is too short for anyone who wants to setup the antenna in a more permanent place, like the back of the car. Lastly, the iBooster (805201) costs a few hundred dollars, but is well worth the investment.
So if your iPhone is with you 24/7 and you use it everywhere—sitting in your office pouring over project details, driving to work everyday, or relaxing on the couch in front of your TV watching re-runs of Friends—then the new Wilson iBooster will take out the agony of weak cell phone signals and bad reception. One of the most frustrating things while talking on the phone is to lose signal in the middle of the call, or worse, have no signal and not be able to call anyone at all. For iPhone users complaining of poor reception and dropped calls, this is the perfect accessory. With the iBooster, you’ll never have the need to say “Can you hear me now?”
1. Rural areas
In many rural areas the housing density is too low to make construction of a new base station commercially viable. In these cases it is unlikely that the service provider will do anything to improve reception, due to the high cost of erecting a new tower. As a result, the only way to obtain strong cell phone signal in these areas is usually to install a home cellular repeater. In flat rural areas the signal is unlikely to suffer from multipath interference, so will just be heavily attenuated by the distance. In these cases the installation of a cellular repeater will generally massively increase signal strength just due to the amplifier, even a great distance from the broadcast towers.
2. Building construction material
Some construction materials very rapidly attenuate cell phone signal strength. Older buildings, such as churches, which use lead in their roofing material will very effectively block any signal. Any building which has a significant thickness of concrete or amount of metal used in its production will attenuate the signal. Concrete floors are often poured onto a metal pan which completely blocks most radio signals. Some solid foam insulation and some fiberglass insulation used in roofs or exterior walls has foil backing, which can reduce transmittance. Energy efficient windows and metal window screens are also very effective at blocking radio signals. Some materials have peaks in their absorption spectra which massively decrease signal strength.
3. Building size
Large buildings, such as warehouses, hospitals and factories, often have no cellular reception further than a few meters from the outside wall. Low signal strength is also often the case in underground areas such as basements and in shops and restaurants located towards the centre of shopping malls. This is caused by both the fact that the signal is attenuated heavily as it enters the building and the interference as the signal is reflected by the objects inside the building. For this reason in these cases an external antenna is usually desirable.
4. Multipath interference
Even in urban areas which usually have strong cellular signals throughout, there are often dead zones caused by destructive interference of waves which have taken different paths (caused by the signal bouncing off buildings etc.). These usually have an area of a few blocks and will usually only affect one of the two frequency ranges used by cell phones. This is because the different wavelengths of the different frequencies interfere destructively at different points. Directional antennas are very helpful at overcoming this since they can be placed at points of constructive interference and aligned so as not to receive the destructive signal.
5. Diffraction and general attenuation
The longer wavelengths have the advantage of being able to diffract to a greater degree so are less reliant on line of sight to obtain a good signal, but still attenuate significantly. Because the frequencies which cell phones use are too high to reflect off the ionosphere as shortwave radio waves do, cell phone waves cannot travel via the ionospohere.
For more information, call us at 1-877-259-4629 or send us an e-mail at Sales@Quantum-Wireless.com
]]>After some Googling, we found gotreception.com. It shows the location and range of all cell phone towers for Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, Nextel and T-Mobile. Take a look below and plug in your zip code and select your cell phone provider.
So what can you do if you are in a dead zone?
Dropped calls and slow data rates are generally caused by distance from a cell tower or natural and man-made obstructions, such as buildings, hills, trees, etc…
Cellular signals for both cell phones and data cards can be boosted by the use of a high gain antenna or the combination of an antenna and bi-directional amplifier system and Quantum Wireless offers multiple solutions to stay connected.
There are two components to ensuring reliable cellular communication. The first step is receiving a strong signal. High gain antennas collect weak or distant cellular signals and send them to the amplifier. The amplifier then boosts those signals and rebroadcasts them to nearby cell phones and data cards.
The second part of the equation is transmitting the signal back to the cell tower which is typically the weakest part of a phone’s ability when used alone. With a bi-directional amplifier you are able to broadcast a much stronger signal back to the cell site at a greater distance. A high quality Wilson amplifier system is critical to maintaining a constant connection and increased cellular standards.
Quantum Wireless offers a wide range of powerful mobile wireless and in-building amplifiers for all carrier frequencies as well as high-gain antennas with multiple mounting options.
For more information, call us at 1-877-259-4629 or send us an e-mail at Sales@Quantum-Wireless.com
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