Knowledge Base
Will my carrier fix the cell signal problem in my home?
Unfortunately there’s no direct, simple answer to this question; it entirely depends on your carrier’s policy and the nature of the problem in your home.
Most of the large cellular carriers offer femtocells
—small, low-power cellular base stations that plug into a high-speed Internet connection—that will boost cellular reception inside your home.
Femtocells have certain limitations, however, including:
- They require a high-speed internet connection at your house. If you don’t have cable, DSL, or fiber internet, a femtocell won’t work in your home.
- They only work with phones on your carrier’s network. If you’re a Verizon customer, and a family member who’s staying with you for a week is on AT&T, your femtocell won’t work with her phone.
- Some femtocells require every cell phone using it to be registered with the femtocell. If you have a group of friends over for the evening, you’ll have to set up every one of their phones (that are on your same network) on your femtocell.
- The number of phones that can be connected at one time to the femtocell is fairly small. T-Mobile’s femtocell, for example, supports 16 simultaneous sessions, only 8 of which receive 4G LTE.
- If you get far enough away from your femtocell, it won’t hand off your call in progress to the cell tower; it will simply drop the call. You can’t start a call inside your house and continue the same call in the car, or vice versa.
As of :
- Verizon sells their Samsung 4G LTE Network Extender femtocell for $250. (It has an average of 3 of 5 stars in 73 user reviews.)
- AT&T has stopped offering femtocells and is migrating customers to WiFi calling (which requires a phone compatible with WiFi-C).
- T-Mobile offers their CellSpot femtocell device only to customers who qualify. They require a $25 deposit.
The alternative to a carrier-specific femotocell is a cell signal booster. Cell signal boosters work with devices from any carrier, do not require devices to register with the booster unit, usually support a larger number of cell phones simultaneously, and seamlessly hand off calls from the booster to a cell tower.
