Cellular/Cellphone Signal Booster (range extender)

[Sid Post]

I'm looking at the Wilson Electronics DB Pro 4G to provide cellphone coverage in rural Texas. The area I'm in has an ATT 4G LTE tower but, it is at the fringe of what my friends ATT Phone can see. My GSM service was basically non-existent so, I traded it for a CDMA phone which works much better but it is also at the fringe of what will work. At my place, I'm running ONE or NO bars for voice service with occasional 3G data service but mostly 1G (?). Text messages usually make it through; though they are sometimes delayed for a half hour or so.

What experiences or words of wisdom do users have for the Zboost, Wilson Electronics, or other similar products? Is the one linked above a good choice at ~$500? Are better choices or similar performance for less money available somewhere else? Is this a wise investment to get reliable phone service? A landline has a break even price point at about 1 year of service. I would rather have reliable cell phone coverage but, a solid "hard" landline has some safety benefits too such as no dead cell phone batteries, no cell phone tower outages, miss placed cell phones, etc. The cell phone is nice in that it can "travel" with me outside the house and the range extender should get me coverage a reasonable distance outside the house beyond the patios.

TIA,
Sid

 

[RevDevil]

I've installed several zBoost brand devices in the last 5 years for folks with the same issues. Specifically the newer SoHo YX545 seems to be what works better than most, based on a handful of reviews. It runs about $250 give or take $50. One thing to note, the outdoor antenna these things use seems to have been redesigned after sending several of them back for replacement. I told the customer service agent on the phone that the AZ sun is brutal and that the current antenna design was not really conducive to this environment. I got a box with 5 new antennas in the mail not more than 1 week later. Great service.

 

[gadgetgeek]

The couple of times I used phones with boosters, they worked well. I don't know how much that was the booster, and how much was the big antenna. Those were all truck mounted phones, with full time power.
beyond that, I have no idea about base-station style devices. I'd say call and ask, but then I remembered that you would be calling a cell company. So that might not go well.