While visiting my hometown I was rest assured that with my new Smartphone, I could keep in touch with my work and be able to communicate with my colleagues. Everything was working according to the plan till I experienced a problem I never thought about while living in a big city. The cell phone reception in my hometown was crappy as hell and I couldn’t even contact my colleagues and my boss when I tried to call them. I’m pretty sure that most of you might have encountered such crappy cell phone services in densely crowded areas, remote villages and especially when you have your home or office building surrounded by huge steel and concrete structures. When you look for an apartment in the big city, there might be several factors that affect your choice and pricing of these apartments. You can change most of the features in a home but you can hardly do anything about the cell phone connectivity if your house is surrounded by huge buildings or is really in a crammed up area. There are several ways how you can improve cell phone signal reception, a few of which have been listed below.
Photo by Nan Palmero, CC BY 2.0
- Change Your Network Carrier
Consumerism is an industry which is highly dependent on the post-sales services provided to the consumers. The post-sale services are highly important especially when talking about an industry like telecommunication. If the consumers feel they are not getting the services that they are paying for, they are free to choose another supplier. Talk to your network carrier by contacting their customer services. There are several solutions to your cell phone network problems that they can offer. If the problems persist you can try changing your cell phone carrier and move to a service provider that avails better connectivity. Due to the lack of cell phone towers, some of the carriers might have better or poorer connectivity than others. I faced a similar problem with Verizon in my area and no matter how much I called them on their customer service; they were unable to provide a viable solution. This however isn’t that easy when you have a multi-year contract with a particular service provider.
- Installing a Femtocell
Several times, when pressured enough by customers service providers might install or sell a Femtocell to solve crappy signals in a particular area or building. A Femtocell is basically a mini cell phone signal tower that is meant to pull the signal from the closest cell phone tower and improves signal connectivity in the place it is installed. Femtocells look like a wireless router and functions like a mini cell phone signal tower in your home or office. Femtocells connect to your broadband internet and allow you to route all your cell phone calls through the internet. Femtocells totally eliminate the requirement of a cell phone signal even though you need a valid cellular connection in order to make calls and even solve the congestion problems in the cell phone networks as calls are routed through the internet than the cell phone network. Several customers were able to get femtocells for free when they experienced extremely poor signal reception. But, telecom companies have since regulated the distribution of these devices and not every customer qualifies for one. However, there are several problems related to femtocells that have kept it from being highly used by the consumers. First of all, you need an extremely fast and reliable broadband internet connection for a Femtocell to give the best results. Femtocells also have a GPS receiver inbuilt in them so that it is only used in locations which are authorized by the government and the telecom companies.
- Signal Amplifiers
When all else fails, and you still cannot get a solution to your cell phone signal problems, you might want to lay down all the weapons and switch to using a signal booster. While changing carriers or installing femtocells can take care of the majority of people’s problems with cell phone connectivity, there are areas where even the most reliable services cannot be accessed due to its location. Be it the huge buildings, or surrounding trees and mountains or a bad broadband connection which puts the signal problem to shame, one has absolutely no choice left but install a signal booster inside his office, home or car.
Most cell phone signal boosters meant for use in homes offices and vehicles comprise of 4 main components. The outside antenna that receives the poor signal, the amplifier or repeater unit that strengthens the weak signal and the internal antenna that relays the now strengthened signal across an area. All these units are connected via a cable that enables signal transfer between these components. Signal boosters are available in various models and with varied boosting capacities. Several signal boosters meant for use in vehicles often come with a cradle on which the cell phone is kept in order to receive signals. Installing a signal amplifier is fairly simple however you might need some technical knowledge to set up the amplifier. For best results, place the external antenna in a position where the signal connectivity is the best. For more information on amplifiers you can also visit the websites of the various manufacturers such as Wilson Amplifiers and others.
We all know that cell phone reception is important for several daily tasks without which make our lives more comfortable. While Smartphone technology has brought a lot of everyday tasks right at our doorstep, it is important for us to receive proper cell phone signals to be able to use the technology.
