5G 4G LTE Cell Phone Signal Booster for Home, RV & Metal Buildings - FCC Approved Cellular Repeater for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile | Improves Calls & Internet in Basements, Rural Areas & Remote Workspaces

My house, and my entire neighborhood, seems to be in a cell phone reception Bermuda triangle. I have at least two towers within a mile or two, yet I could barely capture 2 bars most of the time inside my house, and often less, depending on which room I was in. And forget cell reception in the basement! My wife was having difficulty sending and receiving texts, our connections were so poor.After years of frustration, I finally heard about “cell boosters” or “cell extenders”. It turns out there are two types. One type, the network extender, works off of an existing internet connection, and it is provider-specific. So for instance, if you have an AT&T cell subscription like I do, you would need an AT&T internet network extender.The other type is a network booster or cell booster. This one takes whatever signal is coming from a cell tower and amplifies, or boosts it, inside your house. This one works with all providers. I decided I wanted to provide a better signal for all providers, so our guests would benefit, as well. Therefore, I chose a cell booster.This particular model I am reviewing appeared to be the most economical of those I could find. After ordering, I eagerly awaited its arrival. It came nicely boxed, with all parts necessary for installation. The kit provides U-bolts suitable for mounting the external receiving antenna on a pole. The pole is not provided, but that was not an issue for me with my intended mounting location.My house is two stories, plus a basement. I decided to test the whole setup first by simply mounting the external antenna in an upstairs, south-facing window, pointing nearly due east at the nearest cell antenna. After running the cable down the stairs to the main floor, I stood up the internal broadcast antenna at about waist height and plugged in the amplifier. Excellent, 2 green lights! I was able to boost from maybe -115 dB to maybe -100 dB, but only in a very short radius around the broadcast antenna. And it was necessary to point the internal antenna in kind of a funny angle to avoid a feedback situation with the external antenna, as indicated by a red light on the amplifier. The coverage within the main floor with that angle was not ideal.So I moved the external antenna to a north-facing window, pointed nearly due north at another antenna only about a mile away. This gave me a much better angle of coverage within the main floor of the house for the internal antenna. I was also able to tweak the direction of the external antenna and gain or lose 5-20 dB of boost, simply with better or worse signal reception. But I would still get feedback once in a while, especially at higher boost numbers.At this point, I was still not sure this whole system was really going to be worth the trouble. I was getting some boost, but only in a limited semicircular zone in half of my main floor. And the feedback was troublesome. To be fair, the installation instructions do stress that vertical separation of the two antennas is very important, and my test setup was not really providing much of that. I only had about 8 ft of vertical separation, and about 30 feet of horizontal separation.In the end, I decided I had just enough boost to give it a try for real. My plan was to mount the external antenna in the attic, facing north at the cell tower I tested for the second try. So I spent a whole day crawling around in the attic, mounting the antenna, running cables, drilling holes through walls to get the cable to where I wanted the internal antenna, etc. Not necessarily difficult, but time-consuming. Finally, late in the afternoon, I had enough of the system in place, though not permanently mounted, that I could plug in the amplifier and see what I had.Wow! I mean, really wow! I was getting readings in the -70s, -80s, all over the house! Even 5 bars in the basement! I could hardly believe it. I now get pretty much 5 bars throughout the entire house. Wow! And never a hint of feedback, even with the massive boost signal.So as you can see, I was impressed. Clearly, getting the external antenna up another 15 feet gave me much better reception. And the extra 15 feet of vertical separation eliminated the feedback situation, as well.So we have been running with this for 24 hours now, and we couldn’t be happier.Here are some points that might be helpful. Most of these are in the installation instructions, but I reiterate them here for emphasis:1. Vertical separation of the antennas is very important.2. The two antennas must point away from each other.3. Experiment with how you have your external antenna pointed. Even a half of a degree difference in antenna direction, I found, could add or subtract from your performance.4. Experiment with different cell towers, if you have that option.