Thanks to several dozen Cool Tool readers, I received many suggestions for boosting the strength of my cell phone signal indoors. Basically, the suggestions broke down into four major categories:
\n1) Use call forward system to forward cell calls to my land line.
\n2) Use a VOIP solution that would ring to both my cell number and land line number.
\n3) Use a wireless indoor antenna booster. This requires mounting an antenna outside the house and running cable to a smaller antenna in the room. Typical cost of this solution starts over $400.
\n4) Use a wired indoor antenna booster. This requires having a cable connect from the phone to an indoor antenna. These solutions range from about $40 to $100, depending on the size of the antenna.<\/p>\n
I ended up going with option 4, as a low cost “good enough” solution. I bought an ARC Freedom Antenna. The antenna comes with a three foot cable attached, with a female adaptor at the end. You then have to buy a cable specific for your phone. I have the Palm Treo 600 and got the cable from http:\/\/www.MaxMost.com for $12, plus shipping. (Note that Radio Shack apparently also sells this same antenna, but they have a unique cable terminator which requires you to choose only from their limited assortment of phone cables.) The antenna itself is encased in black plastic, about 4 inches wide by 7 inches high and very thin. It has a small detachable stand for table top use, or also comes with suction cups if you want to mount it to a window or wall. (This antenna can also be used in your car.)<\/p>\n
In my case, I am in a windowless basement with poured concrete walls. Without the antenna I had 1 bar on my Treo with Verizon service, and with the antenna I now have 2 bars. For $52, I can at least now consistently dial out, receive calls and move around the office, although I am now tethered to the antenna. (Hey, maybe I’ll rig up a way to connect this antenna to my belt!) Anyway, problem solved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indoor cell phone booster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}