Indoor Boosters and Carrier Rules

[jpmwizard]

I have a dead area in the interior of a building with pretty good signal strength in the rest of the building (about one city block area, 2 stories, brick exterior) Dead area is first floor interior office area about 100 feet square.

I have looked at Wilson Electronics and other booster amp vendors, am perfectly willing to spend $500 to $1000 or so, but have been stonewalled by Verizon Wireless as to the frequency band used by nearest cell site (VZW has both 800 and 1900 MHz in the area) and cautioned about fines and legal ramifications of re-broadcasting the carrier's signals.

I am looking to get an interior area up from -110 dBm to -75 0r -80 dBm, and it seems to me that if the carrier can't get the signal into my rooms, my little indoor antenna is not likely to get much signal back out beyond a couple of hundred feet, which would still be on my premises.

The equipment vendors say their hardware is "FCC Type Approved" but I wonder if I am risking trouble if I act without the carrier's blessing.

Experience, ideas, quasi-authoritative opinions welcome. Also, can I coerce my phones (many models), Treo 650s, or BlackBerry handhelds into revealing what band they are actually using?

jpmwizard

[jones]

if you can wait a few months,
http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/wi...e-no-more.html (Nokia 6136 WiFi Phone, No More Home Dead Zone)

[Jay2TheRescue]

Originally Posted by jpmwizard I have a dead area in the interior of a building with pretty good signal strength in the rest of the building (about one city block area, 2 stories, brick exterior) Dead area is first floor interior office area about 100 feet square. I have looked at Wilson Electronics and other booster amp vendors, am perfectly willing to spend $500 to $1000 or so, but have been stonewalled by Verizon Wireless as to the frequency band used by nearest cell site (VZW has both 800 and 1900 MHz in the area) and cautioned about fines and legal ramifications of re-broadcasting the carrier's signals. I am looking to get an interior area up from -110 dBm to -75 0r -80 dBm, and it seems to me that if the carrier can't get the signal into my rooms, my little indoor antenna is not likely to get much signal back out beyond a couple of hundred feet, which would still be on my premises. The equipment vendors say their hardware is "FCC Type Approved" but I wonder if I am risking trouble if I act without the carrier's blessing. Experience, ideas, quasi-authoritative opinions welcome. Also, can I coerce my phones (many models), Treo 650s, or BlackBerry handhelds into revealing what band they are actually using? jpmwizard

There are some dual-band repeaters out there. If you get one of those it won't matter. Of course Verizon doesn't like you mucking around with "their" signal, but these devices are approved by the FCC. In the end Verizon can't do anything but whine, and they would have never known if you didn't tell them. I am not really familiar with the engineering modes of CDMA phones, but on GSM phones you can tell what channel and band the phone is using.

Good Luck!

-Jay

[Fire14]

I agree with Jay, Just get it and install it and play ignorant. The worst they would do is have you remove it if they ever found a repeater, and there are people that buy them and use them with very good success.
In fact we bought some for the fire houses to keep the laptops connected when inside 2 of our buildings & never had to call or get approval from Verizon, that I am aware of.

[Bugwart]

Originally Posted by jones if you can wait a few months, http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/wi...e-no-more.html (Nokia 6136 WiFi Phone, No More Home Dead Zone)

Wait? Why wait?

There are plenty of WiFi/Cell Phones available.

[WirelessBeachBum]

FCC approved and "carrier approved" are two different items. If it's not carrier approved, and causes interference of some type with their signal, they can force you to unplug it which would be a big waste of time and money.

You should look into equipment by companies such as Spotwave, they are carrier approved, and work well with the carriers, because when you purchase from them you provide which carrier you are using and your zip code, they will provide the correct equipment for you area. Their systems can also be controlled by the celltower, so instead of pushing out too much power and overloading the sites, the tower can send it a command to drop it's output, which keeps you from interfering with the network, it also gives you less dropped calls, some systems if they are too powerful will see too many sites, and in the CDMA system, if you are seeing (transmitting) to a site that is not in the handoff tables, you take a pretty good chance of a dropped call.

Take a look at spotwave.com.

[Fire14]

Good point WirelessBeachBum and that site has just what the OP is looking for, I forgot about them & it would solve both of his concerns.

I was looking at the Zen Unit due out in April, and it seems like a nice unit except for my area is 1900 Mhz only.
I am suprised that 1 of my Nephews that are up as T-Mobile & has a good signal in my house, which wasn't always true last year, but that is where I would get 1 of these units.

[jones]

Originally Posted by Bugwart Wait? Why wait? There are plenty of WiFi/Cell Phones available.

But they CANNOT HANDOFF between
CEll Site and Wireless Router.

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by Bugwart Wait? Why wait? There are plenty of WiFi/Cell Phones available.

The problem with that is if the carrier doesn't support UMA, you can't use the WiFi part of it for cellular calls. In that case, you'll need to provide your own phone service like Vonage connected to a wireless router and get special software so your WiFi phone can connect to the Vonage service. We are doing this here except that we use our own Cisco Call Manager instead of Vonage.

[CellAntennaJon]

Originally Posted by WirelessBeachBum FCC approved and "carrier approved" are two different items. If it's not carrier approved, and causes interference of some type with their signal, they can force you to unplug it which would be a big waste of time and money. You should look into equipment by companies such as Spotwave, they are carrier approved, and work well with the carriers, because when you purchase from them you provide which carrier you are using and your zip code, they will provide the correct equipment for you area. Their systems can also be controlled by the celltower, so instead of pushing out too much power and overloading the sites, the tower can send it a command to drop it's output, which keeps you from interfering with the network, it also gives you less dropped calls, some systems if they are too powerful will see too many sites, and in the CDMA system, if you are seeing (transmitting) to a site that is not in the handoff tables, you take a pretty good chance of a dropped call. Take a look at spotwave.com.

Good point on the comparison between FCC Approved and Carrier Approved. What you need to know is that you are not causing interference with there towers or signal. You are simply enhancing your signal in your private location. You are not rebroadcasting the signal or changing the signal path from the tower. The funny thing is if most carriers knew what was good for them they would encourage the usage of in building repeaters to retain customer base. In fact we have a close working relationship with Nextel Partners, Cingular and Verizon. They recommend our products all the time.

-Jon

[jones]

This is Only Available on GSM for Now.

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/wi...ip-phones.html (Nokia, Motorola Show Cellular-VoIP Phones)

[WirelessBeachBum]

Originally Posted by CellAntennaJon Good point on the comparison between FCC Approved and Carrier Approved. What you need to know is that you are not causing interference with there towers or signal. You are simply enhancing your signal in your private location. You are not rebroadcasting the signal or changing the signal path from the tower. The funny thing is if most carriers knew what was good for them they would encourage the usage of in building repeaters to retain customer base. In fact we have a close working relationship with Nextel Partners, Cingular and Verizon. They recommend our products all the time. -Jon

Is your relationship with the sales department or the network department with these carriers? Sales will often make a recomendations, but very rarely will any network department want to give up control of any aspect of their service.

And as far as the interference, it is very possible that a cheap piece of equipment or poor installation could interfere with a network.

I've seen an amplified TV antenna, intefere with the uplinks on a cellsite causing dropped calls, so something that is operating on the same licensed frequencies most definetly could cause some problems.