Cell phone antenna for house (repeater)?

[scuba_dave]

I have Cingular, just signed up 4 months ago for another 2 year contract. Our old Cingular phones had decent reception, our new improved phones...don't

We dropped our Land line - $52 a month & went all cell
So now I'm looking for an antenna/repeater setup for better cell phone reception

We have had friends over, cookouts, we are in a dead area - we have tested EVERY phone & major carrier here - no luck

We are "saving" $600 a year without the land line, so if a decent setup costs $300+, it's not a real problem
Thanks

[mdshunk]

Yeah, they sell "YAGI antennas" for cell phones. My buddy at www.mikesandman.com used to sell them. Look around on his site. They weren't too bad of a price.

[Mr T]

Also, take your phones in to your service center. They are always releasing new firmware and service updates. It may help. Usually *228 will update a phone. They probably wont be able to swap out your phones for another model this late in. Most places will let you withina few days or so of getting your new phones. Something to keep in mind the next time your get new phones.

[scuba_dave]

Thank you. I'm looking into the Yagi setup w/wireless in the house
I checked your buddy's site, did a search too & doesn't look like he has them listed any more

Appears to be a few options, the wife has her doubts & wants to wait until the addition is added

[Brian]

http://www.smarthome.com/9625C.HTML

Try this, I don't know if it works well or not.

I would try it out then return it if it doesn't.


My land line stripped of all the features is lower then $20.00 a month.

[removeb4flight]

I just got a new Nokia phone from Cingular, too. I noticed the same thing. The old phone worked at my house if I stood in the right place on my deck, but the new one won't. So much for Cingular's boasting that the new one would work better. It might be better for them, not me. I notice that the calls still drop like they did before. My knowledge of these phones, which are really radios, is not too great. What I understand though, is the old phone used TDMA (time division multiple access) and the new ones are using GSM (I don't know what that is). They want to change all their towers to the new type of data protocol so that Web pages, photos and text messages can be sent. In fact, I think they would be happy if you didn't use the phones to talk on at all!! Somewhere in my radio publications, I have seen cell phone repeaters that you could set up at your house with a tall antenna, so that you could use the phone normally without an antenna connection. I believe these are really called bi-directional amplifiers in the radio world. They are also expensive, so the need to save money on a home phone is going to have to be big to justify the initial expense. Does anybody have a link to sites that explain these cell phones better?