1. Home
  2. Telecom Technical
  3. GSM-1900 cell phone repeaters

GSM-1900 cell phone repeaters

Hello,

I live in San Jose, as some of you might know; in particular I recently bought a house in the eastern foothills.

It seems to suffer from the "high vertical angle" phenomenon -- my T-Mobile (GSM-1900) service is abysmal here, even though I have had good coverage pretty much everywhere else, including in places where my old AT&T TDMA/AMPS phone couldn't reach.

Specifically, the phone works in my driveway and -- just barely -- in my office, which faces uphill, but is functionally dead in the rest of the house.

I am considering putting in an active repeater, since I'd like to get rid of my landline in the medium term. I have looked at a couple of product web pages:

formatting link
Anyone have any experience with these kinds of producs, and/or know if they are actually legal?

-hpa

Reply to
H. Peter Anvin
Loading thread data ...

They're probably legal so long as they stay under the standard FCC power limits for mobile phone. For the home repeater, I'd take my phone up on the roof where the antenna would go and see how the signal is there. If it's OK, you're probably OK.

Also, before I spent $800 on a repeater, I'd check and see whether another mobile service worked better. The 1900 MHz PCS band doesn't propagate anywhere near as well as the AMPS 800 band, and each carrier has a different set of towers, so I'd try out phones from each 800 MHz carrier and see how they work. In San Jose, that's AT&T Wireless and Verizon.

Reply to
John R. Levine

Hi John :)

For what it's worth, I actually had AT&T Wireless before switching to T-Mobile, and the coverage was zero, so the T-Mobile GSM coverage is actually an improvement. I will definitely try out going up to the roof and measure, and perhaps see if I can find someone with Verizon to check out the coverage around here.

-hpa

Reply to
H. Peter Anvin

Spotwave is another option. Try

formatting link
for info. I don't have a recommendation as to how well they work - or don't.

Reply to
Justin Time

hey guys -- keep us posted on what you find, would you? I'm a former san josean who now lives in the sticks of western oregon. cell coverage is good a mile each way from the house, but we seem to be in a dead zone. I've often looked at the internet sites for repeaters, was never sure how good/bad it would really be.

thanks!

Reply to
royb

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.