DIY OMNI DIRECTIONAL 4G ANTENNA BOOSTER HOW TO
DIY OMNI DIRECTIONAL 4G ANTENNA BOOSTER PLUS

If you’re buying, check that any boosters sold are Ofcom-compliant – the reseller will usually advertise this heavily on their store – and check what return policy they offer if the booster fails to work at your home or business. There are some solid and legitimate options, though. Otherwise, the market for mobile signal boosters can be a bit of a Wild West affair, with quite a few disreputable operations selling through eBay or their own online stores. The other networks have now moved away from signal boosters, and instead steer their customers towards Wi-Fi calling features (see below). Of the major mobile networks, only O2 now sells a booster – the O2 Boostbox – and even then, only to its business customers. If you decide to buy a mobile signal booster, you’ll probably need to look online. If you’re struggling to get a usable signal, it’s worth contacting your network and seeing if they can provide a booster before you splash out on your own. Femtocells may also be provided to smaller businesses and individuals in locations where the signal isn’t good enough for reliable voice calls. Networks sometimes provide repeaters to business customers as part of a service contract to ensure that the business gets an acceptable level of coverage. Where can you get a mobile signal booster from? It’s not legal for you to buy and operate a smart repeater of your own, but your mobile network can provide you with an approved and licensed one, giving you the best possible coverage indoors. Typically, femtocells can connect up to eight smartphones at once.įinally, a smart repeater is a standalone indoor repeater that directly boosts the main mobile signal, giving nearby devices a better connection. If your home or office suffers from low-quality voice calls, a femtocell can make a huge difference by routing the traffic over your wired internet line, rather than through the air. Of course, if external coverage is patchy, this may not help: don’t rely on one of these to keep you connected if you’re, say, driving through the Scottish Highlands.Ī different type of booster is the femtocell – basically a compact mobile base station that connects to a fixed broadband connection. It consists of an external antenna connected to a cradle inside the vehicle, so again you get roughly the same signal strength inside your car as you would outside. The idea is that your mobile phones and other cellular devices can connect to the indoor antenna and get coverage that’s at least as good as if they were located outside.Ī low-gain mobile repeater works on a similar principle, but is designed to improve the signal inside a moving vehicle. It normally consists of three parts: a large “downlink” antenna that's located outdoors, a smaller “uplink” antenna inside the building and an amplifier that relays the signal from one to the other. There are four basic types of booster available in the UK for individual use:Ī static indoor repeater is designed to improve coverage inside a building. If you can barely make a call without the sound breaking up, or if your data connection keeps timing out, a mobile signal booster could help.

DIY OMNI DIRECTIONAL 4G ANTENNA BOOSTER HOW TO

READ NEXT: Best broadband providers How to choose the best mobile signal booster for you What does a mobile signal booster do?Ī booster is designed to improve your mobile coverage in areas where the signal is weak, such as inside a house or office building.

DIY OMNI DIRECTIONAL 4G ANTENNA BOOSTER PLUS

Here’s our expert guide to mobile signal boosters, plus our pick of the best mobile signal boosters on the market. If you’re not careful, you could be exposing yourself to a telling off, a nasty fine or even worse. And while certain boosters are licence-exempt, meaning anyone can own and operate them in the UK, there are legal restrictions that you need to be aware of. However, it’s important to pick the right sort of booster, as there are several different types. You can buy boosters from numerous online stores and installation doesn’t have to be difficult, either. But you can banish the problem once and for all by buying your own mobile signal booster. A flaky mobile signal can be infuriating and the network operators are rarely much help.

Diy omni directional 4g antenna booster