| More jobs down the drain The repeater industry is a fairly big business. I thought government was supposed to help create jobs, not kill them. |
|
 pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Buy One Now If You Need It The title of this article should read "Need a Signal Booster? Buy one NOW Before the FCC Regulates them to Death"
This smells a lot like the CAN-SPAM act... it ended up legalizing most spam. Given how sympathetic the FCC is towards the concerns of cell phone carriers, my guess is that FCC guidelines are going to make it as inconvenient as possible to own one of these devices.
--
Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. |
|
|
|
Reviews:
 ·Charter
| said by pnh102:The title of this article should read "Need a Signal Booster? Buy one NOW Before the FCC Regulates them to Death"
This smells a lot like the CAN-SPAM act... it ended up legalizing most spam. Given how sympathetic the FCC is towards the concerns of cell phone carriers, my guess is that FCC guidelines are going to make it as inconvenient as possible to own one of these devices.
and people will continue to buy the poorly made ones from china that do interfere with the cell phones of others because the cell companies will deny you the use of one at all costs except if it benefits them. |
|
pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | said by Chubbysumo:and people will continue to buy the poorly made ones from china that do interfere with the cell phones of others because the cell companies will deny you the use of one at all costs except if it benefits them. To me, this just seems like a problem that cell phone companies can solve on their own simply by putting up more antennas on their own. Newer antennas are far less obtrusive than older ones.
--
Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. |
|
| isn't the idea to do as little as possible and make as much money as possible? |
|
| Blame it on the digital disease Its just the digital disease, to control everything in this country. |
|
| reply to pnh102
Re: Buy One Now If You Need It said by pnh102:To me, this just seems like a problem that cell phone companies can solve on their own simply by putting up more antennas on their own. Newer antennas are far less obtrusive than older ones.
But why spend money on new towers that would solve a long term solution when you can grease some palms in the short term and make more money in the long run by being the only source of repeaters for your customers? Why let your customers source one from Amazon for ~$200 when you can kill the competition and sell your [insert company name] branded one at 3 times the markup?
Oh, and I like your signature 
--
"My weakness is that I care too much" |
|
pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Point.
I wouldn't mind the use of in-home boosters provided by the cell phone carrier, but these should be provided at no extra charge to the customer, as it compensating for a defect in the service.
--
Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. |
|
 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to NObama
Re: More jobs down the drain Seriously is everything always about something? I pity you. I really do if you believe the way you do. |
|
Reviews:
 ·Callcentric
·Charter
| reply to pnh102
Re: Buy One Now If You Need It Perhaps they could offer them for free if it's left open for anyone to use, or a nominal charge if it's locked down for use only by the owner. I would be interested in how many femtocells the carriers could give away vs. the cost of permitting, constructing and maintaining 1 cell site.
--
Follow me on Twitter: @MyTechLife2 |
|
pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | said by MyTechLife:Perhaps they could offer them for free if it's left open for anyone to use, or a nominal charge if it's locked down for use only by the owner. I would be interested in how many femtocells the carriers could give away vs. the cost of permitting, constructing and maintaining 1 cell site. It should definitely not be free for anyone to use, as it is using a broadband subscriber's potentially capped bandwidth.
--
Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. |
|
 aaronwtPremium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:Point.
I wouldn't mind the use of in-home boosters provided by the cell phone carrier, but these should be provided at no extra charge to the customer, as it compensating for a defect in the service.
Most carriers will provide one free of charge. As long as you show you get a crappy signal from them in your home, they will typically provide one for free.
But if you have a halfway decent signal, no one should be expecting the carrier to provide it for free, since it's not really needed. |
|
Sammer
join:2005-12-22
Canonsburg, PA
1 edit | reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:Point.
I wouldn't mind the use of in-home boosters provided by the cell phone carrier, but these should be provided at no extra charge to the customer, as it compensating for a defect in the service.
The carriers don't want to admit that there are defects in their networks that could be easily solved (at a cost to the carrier) by the use of micro-cells and femtocells. If they really cared about service rather than just the almighty dollar they would be doing more to improve service now. As stated by the previous poster if you complain loud enough ("squeaky wheel gets the grease") they may try to resolve the problem for no charge. |
|
| Without a doubt. I've contacted Verizion about their shortcomings in my community. Provided everything possible to show that we're essentially in a deadzone. I was just offered a femtocell as a fix, at my costs. I would have gone ahead and said sure, but we dont even have broadband capable of providing the correct boost. AWESOME. |
|
Reviews:
 ·Frontier Communi..
| licensed freqencies What part of the above is so hard to understand?
The carriers paid billions of dollars for the right to EXCLUSIVELY broadcast transmissions in the cellular/PCS/AWS/etc bands. Stop acting as though it's some sort of conspiracy because they want the ability to control which devices broadcast on these frequencies, where they are located, and how much power they transmit.
Femtocells are available to fix coverage gaps. Of course people around here bitch about those too, with absolutely no technical understanding of what is required to ensure femtocells don't interfere with users of the macro cellular network. I've even seen people bitching about the fact that they can't easily change the antenna configurations or tweak the transmit levels of their femtocell. Apparently they equate them to wi-fi access points and desire the same amount of control over them, forgetting that wi-fi has only limited ability to deprive your neighbor of service and that it operates on unlicensed frequencies.
Invest in a landline or femtocell if the service sucks that badly where you live. Break your contract if you must, Verizon and T-Mobile both have "get out of jail free" cards in their contract if you move somewhere that has no coverage. I presume AT&T and Sprint do as well, though I've never done business with them directly and can't confirm. |
|
contsolePremium
join:2003-12-30
Bloomfield, CT | Which Ones? Is this the about the pico cell sites (like Samsung makes for Verizon) or Wilson Electronic repeaters for home and car or the $20,000 systems that Tessco sell for office buildings? |
|
| Thing unusual here. Devices that radiate RF are under the FCC's jurisdiction. Devices such Wifi, cordless phones, garage door openers are all regulated by the FCC as well. Why should signal boosters be any different? Unlike part 15 devices a cell phone booster is operating on a very important piece of radio spectrum. A malfunctioning booster will create interference and drive down data rates for everyone else in that particular sector of the cell.
An interesting piece of history... Motorola with the early MicroTAC/TeleTAC series of analog phones used to have a handsfree kit that would clone the ESN of the portable phone into a 5w transceiver installed in the car which became the actual phone. New standards to prevent cell phone cloning were enacted so motorola had to completely re engineer their handsfree kit. They pretty much created a in car cell phone booster except the handset had to be plugged into a rather bulky cradle to couple the signal between the booster and the phone.
When the digital CDMA phones arrived on the market motorola dropped the booster and simply provided connectors on the phone to hook to an external antenna. When Motorola switched from focusing on selling phones to the business sector to the consumer sector, they completely dropped the notion of selling a car kit for their phones. |
|
| reply to Crookshanks
Re: licensed freqencies Investing in a landline doesnt help with my cell not working?
Femtocell's require broadband capable of a sustained connection. If verizion had any intention of deploying high speed here, it would be an instant sell to 200 of the 300 homes. Instead, we're stuck with a copper infrastructure that is 40 years old. Believe me, I know where I live and how we're not going to see an antenna placed closer to us. But, its frustrating that I can 3 bars of 4G just 200 yards or so away, and if i want a booster, they're taking that option away |
|
Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| said by jeepwrang3:Investing in a landline doesnt help with my cell not working? It gets you working telecommunications, isn't that the whole point? Working landline > cell phone with no signal.
said by jeepwrang3:and if i want a booster, they're taking that option away
With limited exceptions, you've never had the right to broadcast radio waves on a licensed frequency where you are not the licensee. I understand your frustrations here and it truly sucks but if you're being fair can you not understand why they don't want third parties putting up transmitters that broadcast on their licensed spectrum? Transmitters that they have no control over and limited recourse against if they interfere with other customers?
Besides, you DO have other options. Voice communications are easily provided for with a POTS line. If you have 4G service 200 yards away it would be just as easy to get it back to your house with wi-fi as it is to invest in a cellular repeater that may or may not be legal. |
|
 NetFixerFrom my cold dead handsPremium
join:2004-06-24
The Boro
·Comcast Business..
·Vonage
 ·Cingular Wireless
·Comcast
| Without a booster, I could not use my cell phones at home Without this device (which does have built-in protection against interfering with AT&T's network according to the manufacturer *):
and this external antenna:
I would not be able to use my cell phones at home (I am talking about 0 signal strength bars and a No Signal display). AT&T in theory has a solution that they would sell me called the AT&T 3G MicroCell, but unfortunately that device requires a GPS connection, and GPS also does not work inside my apartment. The 3G MicroCell also requires that I give up bandwidth on my Internet connection which I do not like, but that alone would not be a deal killer.
* I ran into the cellular network interference protection when initially installing this system. Just about anywhere I tried to locate the repeater box inside my apartment, all I would get was a red alarm light indicating that it had detected interference and that it had shut itself down. The only spot that worked (which also turned out to be an ideal central location) was when the repeater box was shielded from its external antenna when located behind the aluminum HVAC ductwork. The areas "behind" the ductwork do not get as strong a signal as the areas "in front" of the ductwork, but at least there is a signal (as opposed to no signal from the cell tower).
--
We can never have enough of nature.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. |
|
