#Mobile network booster for basement tv#

In the real world, the greatly improved upload with both kits translated into responsive page loads and a better experience with the house's Roku TV streaming device.

#Mobile network booster for basement download#

Even though the unboosted download speeds are great-better than I usually get upstairs in my own house, with plenty of signal-that weak upload means a lot of errors and retries when you're trying to request a page in the first place. That's because when unboosted, my Pixel 2XL struggled to reach AT&T's cell tower, even though the tower had no trouble reaching it. Both booster kits fixed that, making link and button taps responsive again. Sometimes the long pause turns into a hard error and you have to hit reload. Once it begins, it usually finishes pretty quickly, but that initial pause will drive you nuts. Advertisementīrowsing the Internet at my parents' house without the booster kit tends to be a frustrating, balky experience-you tap a link, and it takes forever before the new page begins to render. I really wanted to find some way to improve it. The all-LTE Internet solution I came up with worked, and Mom insisted it was fine-but it seemed pretty sketchy to me. I ended up buying an LTE modem and putting an AT&T SIM card in it.

But they didn't learn that no ISP was willing to deliver service to the house until after they'd already bought it. So while it wouldn't be cheap and would also require a bit of setup, could cell signal boosters help in either situation? Boosting weak rural LTEĪbout a year and a half ago, my parents bought a house only 20 miles away, so they could see more of us and their grandkids. Just power up two 5GHz-linked electronic boxes, set them up via a smartphone app, and go.

#Mobile network booster for basement pro#

The Cel-Fi Pro for AT&T ($695) is an all-indoor kit, with no antennas to hang and no cables to run. So I might be able to get away without running any wires at all. The LTE signal is good-to-great in the top floor of my house-it's just that pesky partial basement where things get dicey. Since the LTE signal is pretty poor everywhere in my parents' house, kits like these were their best bet. From the outdoor Yagi, a leg of coax cabling needs to be routed indoors and fed to the signal booster, which then has an output port which connects to an indoor panel antenna via another coax run.

Two of those products- Cel-Fi Go X ($899), and SureCall Fusion4Home ($499)-are products with outdoor Yagi antennas that should be roof or pole mounted and aimed directly at a nearby cell tower. I described two problem areas to him as fertile grounds for testing-my partial basement floor, and my parents' rural house-and we picked out three products to test. Serendipitously, the owner of out to me while I was dithering, and the site offered to let me test a few of the signal boosters they carry. Prices range anywhere from $180 to $1,000 and up, and reviews tend to be all over the place for every device offered. Searching Amazon for cellular signal boosters feels like navigating a minefield. But today, in our increasingly need-to-always-connect world, what do you do if you've got an LTE (cellular service) dead spot? I've spent a lot of time talking about how Wi-Fi works and reviewing various products aimed at fixing Wi-Fi dead spots.