cell booster

[BeaverIslandGuy]

Seems like the closest thread section to post.

Thought I would let people know that we make two significant, and helpful, technology upgrades this summer.

First is a cell-phone booster called Zboost. It is basically an amplifier for cell phones and broadband cards. Our coverage here has been spotty, and broadband speeds less than desirable. With this nice piece of technology. all cells and cards are at 5 bars and broadband speeds are noticably faster.


The booster is an amplifier with both external and internal antennas. We mounted the outdoor one line of site to the center harbor cell tower. the inside one is mounted were we do most of our work. (fyi for cell only coverage it can be in an attic, but for broadband you want the internal one within 3-5 feet of your broadband card for optimum performance.). Have used with three different broadband cards thus far (all Verizon). All improved significantly.

I will try to get a quantified speed assessment and post, but can tell you we are most pleased.

The second item is a MIFI broadband card from Verizon. Still assessing if it is right for me, but it is slick. It is basically a broadband to WIFI converter. Why is this important? With a broadband card, normally one machine at a time hooked up to the card. With this, it transmits a finite range WIFI signal and you can hand 5 devices off of it. So far, we have three computers with no noticable decline of service. Have been told we could configure our printer to WIFI as well, but have not tried that yet.

This is definitely more convenient than a typical card as once I set up the card (and to be fair it took me 2 hours with Verizon on the phone to do it), it has been flawless with 54 Mbps speeds (computer WIFI limited, I think) within 20 feet of the base station. Three comments:

a) Range is limited. Works well within 30 feet of the unit (and per the above, the unit needs to be within 5 feet of the booster so I can't "walk" with it), but tested it a 60 feet and could not find signal at all.

b) Nice small unit. size of a credit card but 1/4" thick. Does not need to be plugged into the computer after set-up at all.

c) Powers up fully upon plugging in. This may eventually make it a good driver for WIFI enabled webcams - when we get to that Need to figure out how many pics I can upload to an FTP site without blowing my monthly data limit (Hint - any help on typical file size type info would be great - that part of this is new to me.)


Really happy with the zboost, which took about 2 hrs to install (of which half was trialing several locations). For those of us not able to access cable or DSL, this makes transmit speeds good. Now if only Verizon would update that tower to 3G......

Will keep all updated on the MIFI.

PS. It's technology, and could be webcam useful, so I thought here might be a good place. If you think I should post this under another section, please let me know.