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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 femtocellsexternal link icon—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.