Multiple Band Home Booster

Cell coverage at our cabin in a rural area of the Midwest was marginal at best. This signal booster improved the coverage significantly, providing us now with reliable cell and data connections.Before I installed the booster, I looked up the FCC ID on the FCC website to see if the product indeed had a valid FCC Authorization—all was good there. Following that, I registered it with both Sprint and US Cellular, the two-primary cell-service providers that our family uses.The construction of the amplifier and the two antennas looked good. The quality of the manual was more-or-less acceptable. I am somewhat concerned that the outdoor coax has a white jacket, as white is more prone to being degraded by the UV light from the sun; that could eventually limit the useful life of the system.One particularly useful feature of this Phonetone booster is that it provides four LEDs that indicate the status of four frequency bands, plus four independents gain adjustments (the 700 MHz LTE is made up of 2 bands, thus it is advertised as a 5-band system). If all four LEDs are green, it indicates proper operation. In my application I could not easily get the desired 30+ ft of separation between the directional outdoor antenna and the directional indoor panel antenna—all I could get was about 22 ft. That resulted in the CELL and PCS LEDs occasionally turning red, indicating an oscillation. One advantage of a booster system the uses a directional indoor antenna, is that by repositioning the indoor antenna more downward, I was able to solve the CELL-band issue. And by turning the gain adjustment down 5 dB on the PCS band I resolved that problem (there is no PCS coverage in my area, so reducing the gain has no undesired impact).While the two directional antennas are being advertised as being high-gain, the outdoor antenna in reality offers only very modest gain and directivity in the 700 and 850 MHz band (it has only two elements that are active on those lower frequencies). Fortunately, it worked well in my application. After some experimentation with what direction to point the outdoor antenna, I was able to point the antenna to lock on to a rather weak roaming 4G LTE tower to the south that provided 2 Mbs data rates, while ignoring a stronger 4G LTE site to the east that was providing me with only 0.2 Mbs rates. At the same time, the antenna’s directivity is low enough that I can still receive signals from other service providers off the sides and back of the antenna.All-in-all, I am quite pleased with the purchase and the product’s performance. I did not need to use the Amazon-provided product-support service, but was glad to know that such a service was available if needed.

First, my background is Electrical Engineering.This device works, but the interior signal drops off very rapidly. About 10 feet, and forget about getting through a wall. Flipped the interior antenna upside down and that helped, but only slightly.The exterior antenna is about 40 feet off the ground on the roof. I get a great signal on the cell phone in that location, but it's a little inconvenient to climb on the roof to make calls. The device should be getting a great signal into the amplifier, but just can't get any reasonable interior coverage. Plan on about 10 sq. feet of coverage. Will continue to play with the unit and update this as needed.

Simple to set up, but mine did not work reliably. I would get it set, get decent signal, but within minutes it would drop out completely, and not from feedback, as all lights would remain green. I eventually figured out that the N-connectors seemed to be shorting out. Mine must have been a return, or was assembled poorly, as the antenna N-connector was way over crimped, crushing the line pretty good. The indoor antenna connector on the other hand, didn't seem to be crimped at all, and only the shrink-wrap around the joint was holding the pin/wire into the connector. I think it is this connection that is bad, everything is way too loose, there's no way it is a good connection. I'm returning it and going to buy a custom setup, like I should have in the first place.

Hooked it up and installed outdoor antenna. No problems there.Where as, I would normally get 1-2 bars in my home, after boosting, I got 4 bars!However, while it did boost my data a little, it didn't appreciably boost it enough to make a significant impact on data rates. I was still only at 1.2kbps after boosting. Better than nothing but unfortunately not enough to stream video or even audio.The improvements came when my cell phone was in the same room as the box antenna. The indoor antenna didn't seem effective in the next room (the box antenna).All in all, I didn't get the data boost I wanted and I only got improvements when in the same room as the antenna.So, I can say that it generally worked, but not good enough for me.Maybe I'll try a different indoor antenna.A bit of a hassle to set this up because you have to get the antenna on a high place in the home.Decided to return it. And it was hassle to package the thing up again. (not negative marks for installation and re-packaging; it's expected).I can't say the in ability to boost data rates effectively was the fault of the HW. It may just be my proximity.However, the indoor antenna is certainly inadequate to cover my home. (negative marks for that).