Hello

I've been doing some searching, but haven't found anything yet. We just moved to a house on the outskirts of Uster. Now that we're settled in the house, we've noticed that our mobile phone reception is quite poor. We both work at home quite often and use our mobiles when we do, so have been looking for a mobile phone signal booster.

Does anyone have any experience with one that is for stationary use? I've seen some on the market, but more designed for US mobile phone carriers and phones. Does anyone know of any that work in Switzerland?

Thanks
monkeynose

You will find them advertised, but they don't work.

The only thing I can suggest is to see which network has the best signal in your area, and change to them.

Orange coverage map:

http://www1.orange.ch/residential_su...-coverage.html


Swisscom coverage map:

http://www.swisscom-mobile.ch/scm/wi...l_netz-en.aspx

Hi, I don't think he means those little stickers you put on your phone. If I understand the OP correctly, he means those signal repeaters you attach to an external (outside) antenna and will then forward the signal into your apartment. These work very well, although I'm not sure I'd like to have a microwave radiation source in my living room.

I'm not sure if any consumer products exist for this (they do in the US, but I've never seen any in Switzerland). There's a company who offers such solutions but I doubt they'd be affordable for private customers:

http://www.sifax.ch/673.html

Changing the network might be a better solution. I myself live in an apartment where I only have reception in one room (which happens to be the office, which is fortunate). Unfortunately, this goes for all available providers.


Peter

What you want is a femtocell However this is quite new and afaik not yet commercially available in Switzerland.

A possible solution if your mobile has a socket for an external antenna (some older models still do, orginally for using an external antenna on cars) is a high-gain external antenna.

These look like a mini TV aerial. You simply point them at the distant cellphone base station and they greatly improve the signal. These are absolutely legal and quite cheap, but hard to find. Of course you need to fix the antenna in place and the mobile then has a cable attached, but you'll have a good signal and can unplug the cable when leaving the house.

If this might be of interest, post back here and I'll search around for details.

RS

Here's a cheap do-it-yourself solution:

Clever!

But what the video doesn't say is that you need to rotate the can/phone until the open (front of phone) is pointing at the nearest cellphone base station. If you don't know where that is, try rotating SLOWLY whilst watching the signal level icon on the phone. Make sure as few objects, (metal, walls, people) are in the line of the phone to that distant cellphone base station as these soak up the signal.

SMS's will often get through when signal levels are much too low for a conversation.

You can attach a headset once you've got the orientation right. If your headset has a call answer button you won't need to pick it up. Better still if it has voice-activated dialling.

But a proper directional external antenna will give even better results.

RS