Even though I live in a suburb of a major city, my mobile coverage can be spotty at home, regardless of where I am in the house. I tried switching to wi-fi, and it was worse. If you have the same problem as me, check out San Diego-based Nextivity, which has developed a mobile signal booster to tackle this small, but extremely annoying, problem.
Nextivity’s Cel-Fi will boost the signal to your mobile phone from one bar to five bars, thus increasing data speeds and extending battery life, since your phone won’t be constantly looking for a signal from the closest tower.
In order for it to work, you must have at least 1 bar of 3G coverage available, but once you get Cel-Fi set up, you your phone signal bars will spike immediately. The wireless system is ridiculously easy to use: Put the Window Unit near a window where you get the best signal, and place the Coverage Unit somewhere else in the house– the farther from the WU, the better your signal.
For the tech geeks out there, the device uses an IntelliBoost Baseband Processor, which was designed to optimize the indoor reception of 3G wireless signals and ensures that the device will never degrade the macro network while providing coverage. It also allows Cel-Fi to adequately adjust to the network environment by using uplink signal gating, real-time path loss analysis and automatic gain control.
Before you can buy one, you have to go through a checklist (it’s on every page of their website) to be sure that the Cel-Fi will work with your mobile phone, as it is operator network specific. If you’re good, then here’s a coupon for you: use coupon code 5BARS to get $100.
