Cellular phone signal boosters

Sep 13, 2013
74
Beneteau Oceanis 41 Seattle
Ones anyone have experience to share with cell phone boosters? Shakespeare and Wilson seem to make the most recommended ones. Do you have first hand experience? Anyone on Puget Sound?manyone on t-mobile in these waters? Are your antennas mast mounted, and if so, where? There is a lot of power boat cases out there, but I want to understand how helpful antenna height is, and if mounting by the spreaders helps.

Also, how about radar interference? I have a simrad 3G radar, which I thought used a broad spectrum of frequencies in the cellular frequency range, which might interfere. Do I have to worry about where Should mount relative to each?
 
Feb 6, 1998
11,701
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
Ones anyone have experience to share with cell phone boosters? Shakespeare and Wilson seem to make the most recommended ones. Do you have first hand experience? Anyone on Puget Sound?manyone on t-mobile in these waters? Are your antennas mast mounted, and if so, where? There is a lot of power boat cases out there, but I want to understand how helpful antenna height is, and if mounting by the spreaders helps.

Also, how about radar interference? I have a simrad 3G radar, which I thought used a broad spectrum of frequencies in the cellular frequency range, which might interfere. Do I have to worry about where Should mount relative to each?

Wilson hands down....
 
Jan 14, 2014
225
Newport Newport 28 Fair Haven, NY
Can't speak to the area or interference issues, but I've also never been let down by Wilson boosters. I have one in my car, and have for years. The lake I'm on has coverage, but I'm sure I'll migrate a Wilson into the boat when I go to Ontario next summer too.

I would imagine the higher the better on the antenna, but also remember your losses along the cable. Likely won't matter where in relations to other things it is, since the antenna will be pretty isolated from the mast materials and such by virtue of the antenna mount, in a marine setting. Not exactly going to use a magnetic mount, for example.
 

Gunni

.
Mar 16, 2010
5,937
Beneteau 411 Oceanis Annapolis
The T-Mobile network is very small and spotty. Might want to fix that.
 
Feb 6, 1998
11,701
Canadian Sailcraft 36T Casco Bay, ME
Definitely the best signal booster is switching to Verizon.
I have Verizon but still need a booster on the Coast of Maine...;) I agree though, for years in the corporate world I had a company supplied AT&T phone and my personal Verizon phone side by side every day. Verizon kicked its butt all over the US, not just in Maine...
 
Jan 22, 2008
423
Catalina 30 Mandeville, La.
darn it, I just deleted a long post. That's what I get trying to operate two PC's at the same time.

In my other life, I search for and mitigate RF interference to wireless networks like T-Mob's. Probably the single biggest offender is cellphone booster amps. They're typically installed improperly or crappy quality, or set too high ( gain). Separation of the donor and server antennas is the most important factor to consider. If too close, the amp will oscillate and produce a lot of wide band noise (similar to a microphone feeding back). The noise affects everyone in the area. Turning the gain too high could also cause oscillation even if the antennas are reasonably spaced. The gain is like turning up the volume or power on the amp. Some people seem to think more power is always better and turn it all the way up.

Picture a large room full of people with a speaker. The speaker is the cellsite and the people are the cellphones. The speaker and people are talking to each other. As long as the room is quiet, they can speak without having to yell. Then the loud talker booster amp guy enters the room and now everyone has to yell to be heard by the speaker. They have to be louder than the booster guy. Some people in the back of the room will not be heard by the speaker. Let's hope they're not having an emergency like trying to call 911. Data rates for everyone go down because the data transmissions have to use more power just to get through and have to retransmit more data packets.

Wilson seems to be serious about their amps and builds them with anti-oscillation circuitry and applies for approval from carriers and FCC. This is why they're one of the few, if not only legitimate consumer grade 4G LTE amp on the market. LTE is more sensitive to noise as described above and will become even more so as carriers move to voice over LTE.

Make sure you get the proper amp for the carrier and service you have. If you have a 4G LTE device, look for a 4G LTE amp that operates specifically on T-Mobile bands. Keep in mind, that if you change carriers and go over to Vz or ATT, your amp will likely be useless there. Mount the antennas away from eachother. Put the donor antenna as high as practical/possible and the server inside the cabin. Test setting the gain at different levels and keep as low as possible.

Understand also, that your range will be limited by other factors as well. High speed data requires accurate synchronization. As you move create distance, you add time to the delivery of data packets. If your packets are arriving late, your data will slow down to allow time for the packets to arrive. Also, there area areas like the Gulf of Mexico where other companies have the same frequency band licenses as land based operators. You could be causing interference to an oil platform operating in the same bands while sailing 10 miles offshore. They are likely to just blame the land based carriers though.

Your radar operates 9.3-9.4 GHZ and wouldn't be a problem to the amp or cellphone. T-Mob does have some operations in the 1900MHz PCS band and the 5th harmonic would be in that area. The amp could trash the radar possibly, especially if close and in the same plane. The spreader would be a good place for the donor antenna, provided it didn't cause any issues with the radar ( probably won't). Try it and see.

So most important, don't go with a cheap chinese amp, get one that covers your carrier and device type, install the antennas properly, and keep the gain at a reasonable level.

Oh, the FCC has a resolution out there that requires the user of these amps to "register" them with the carrier for approval. I don't think any of the carriers want to get into that and none, as far as I know, are actually doing that.
 
Feb 26, 2004
22,985
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
Thanks, Forrest

That was a great post. Active Captain's recent newsletter discussed just this issue.
 
Jan 22, 2008
423
Catalina 30 Mandeville, La.
I have Verizon but still need a booster on the Coast of Maine...;) I agree though, for years in the corporate world I had a company supplied AT&T phone and my personal Verizon phone side by side every day. Verizon kicked its butt all over the US, not just in Maine...
Back in the early days of cellular, the FCC allocated the original 850MHz cellular bands. There were two licenses in each area A & B. The A band was distributed by lottery to private entities and teh B bands were given to the local phone companies. VZ was the local phone company back then - Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, etc. Later, more frequencies were allocated and sold by the FCC. This was the PCS bands that companies like SPrint were based. Eventually, after the telecommunications act of 1996 deregulated the wireless companies and allowed the mergers and acquisitions to take place. To stay relevant, the players had to have a nationwide footprint. ATT purchased PCS licenses in the northeast wher VZ had an established network on 850 for 10-15 years already. The same thing happened in the SE where Bellsouth had an established network on 850 and VZ built a network on 1900 PCS. The problem for ATT in the northeast and VZ in the southeast is the 850MHz cellular band propagates better. As radio signals reflect off of buildings and trees and other objects, the 1900 MHz signals get much weaker than the 850MHz signals do. This is why VZ seems so much better in your area, but has the same problem in much of the south where ATT is pretty much king.
 
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Gunni

.
Mar 16, 2010
5,937
Beneteau 411 Oceanis Annapolis
I hung on to my old Motorola StarTac until the bitter end because VZW maintained that analog into the digital transition. That badboy probably cooked my earlobe for good, but I had comms 15 miles offshore the whole way down the eastern seaboard. Miss that StarTac..
 
Sep 13, 2013
74
Beneteau Oceanis 41 Seattle
Forrest, this was really helpful. Thanks to all the others too. Sounds like Wilson is the way to go, I received a strong recommendation for their tech support, I guess I will be testing that soon.