At first, I was skeptical after reading some of the one-star reviews. However, it does work for me, and we do get a fantastic improvement in service. It appears that there are a bunch of factors in how well this will work for your individual situation, 1) Your cell phone provider, 2) Distance from tower, 3) Terrain, 4) Line of site. These factors probably account for most of the one-star reviews.
My Situation: No line-of-site to tower, signal strength -120Dbm (very bad), very mountainous terrain, 5+ miles to the nearest tower. I had one bar inside, phone calls were extremely unreliable, to the point of not being usable, texts would occasionally send/receive if given enough time, 3G & 4G data were non-existent. No significate difference outside the house.
First, align the antenna properly with a signal strength app, and set it up according to the directions, height, distance between booster and antenna, etc.…
After the installation we improved to 3-4 bars. Signal strength now at ~-100Dbm+, and bounces around, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Calls work great, 1 dropped call in 20 mins, (which is perfectly acceptable due to the remoteness of the house), texts are consistent and reliable, I would say 100% improvement on the performance of texting. Data was the biggest shock,! Yes data does work now (most of the time). The phone shows 4G and speed tests shows 400-600Kbs, however data does seem to fade out at times, again perfectly acceptable over what we did have, which was nothing for data. We have Verizon so I aligned it to the nearest Verizon tower, our AT&T friends said they did see a small improvement, T-Mobile users said no change at all. The nearest T-Mobile tower is probably many miles away, if there even is one. So, all the T-Mobile weboost haters probably need to direct that hate to their cell phone provider, not weboost. T-Mobile people, I would figure out where your nearest tower is before buying.
I think this booster falls under the, “your mileage may vary category” and depends a lot on the factors mentioned above.
The one thing that is completely bogus is their claim about the square footage coverage for the house. This was with the 1 Room Weboost, I have found you need to keep within 10-15 feet of the inside antenna, no matter the room size. Once you figure this out, it’s not a problem. The description should read, “covers 1 very small room”. Perhaps the multi-room systems have better coverage.
Bottom line is, yes it did work great for us!
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