Anyone have first hand experience with external cell antenna/boosters/amps/repeaters?

[Muck]

In the very near future I am going to be moving out to the boonies.

As in Adams County Ohio boonies.

That means my only options for anything other than 56k are satellite (which I would like to avoid) or cell based....and the cell reception sucks donkey balls.

Sooo...I'm likely going to have to throw up an outdoor antenna on a tower and an indoor amp/repeater to get acceptable & (somewhat) reliable reception.

Anyone have/used/setup a similar rig and have any experience they want to share?

On a similar note, anyone have any recomendations on cell based data subscriptions? Who has the best deals and so on?

 

[jwinslow]

On a similar note, anyone have any recomendations on cell based data subscriptions? Who has the best deals and so on?

I have a Sprint U760 (usb modem) unlimited plan, $30 month. This was a deal through their employee pricing, which is no longer available, IIRC ($50ish now). Got it May 2007 (when no DSL was available at home), DSL then arrived and was installed Xmas 07. The sprint treats me quite well in various parts of ohio, as well as IN & MI. However, I really don't use it much anymore to justify the expense.

If you could make use of it, I'd be glad to figure out a way for you to take over my plan. I know on sprintusers.com there are threads about external antennas and boosters for situations like yourself.

Here is the coverage map:
Sprint and Nextel Phones: Direct Connect Walkie Talkie Phones & Coverage Map

What is it like in your locale?

 

[Muck]

What is it like in your locale?

See that big grey area?

Smack dab in the middle.

 

[jwinslow]

Hmm... well it looks like you might have roaming data (which is decent). I have no experience with the extended antennas, I wonder if they'd be enough to get you some of the green lovin'

 

[Muck]

My property is south of West Union, almost to the river.

Cingular

Verizon

T-Mobile

Nextel

 

[jwinslow]

Are those voice maps, or data maps? The sprint one you linked earlier was a voice coverage map.

Not sure how the roaming works, but it looks like VZW & Cingular could be of use if they can be 'roamed'. I believe my plan includes unlimited roaming, but since I rarely encounter it I've never stopped to figure out the back-end of what network it is using for those times.

 

[jwinslow]

Also, VZW's "unlimited" plan has a 6 GB bandwidth limit last I checked. For normal use this is no issue, but if you do regular downloading... you might want to use a different carrier.

 

[Muck]

Are those voice maps, or data maps? The sprint one you linked earlier was a voice coverage map.

Not sure how the roaming works, but it looks like VZW & Cingular could be of use if they can be 'roamed'. I believe my plan includes unlimited roaming, but since I rarely encounter it I've never stopped to figure out the back-end of what network it is using for those times.

Doh!

The Cingular one is voice (as is Nextel, but I don't really care about them)...looks like their data coverage is a bit better.

I know Cingular has a new tower in West Union and I'm betting money that they'll have the best signal at my location.

Ultimately my goal is to set up a WiFi network over the entire property. There are currently three houses there and mine will be numer four.

Eventually I want to set up point to point wireless connections between the other buildings and my house and just let everyone share a single pipe to the net.

It'll be a fun challenge...all of the houses except for one are inside the treeline and separated by upwards of half a kilometer.

So we're looking at high gain unidirectional antennas at all the other buildings. I have a few old Primestar dishes that I rig up which would give me 20-22db of gain but hopefully I won't need quite that much and can put together something smaller (although one of the dishes might be perfect for the cell antenna) .

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the two old 3 meter dishes that are sitting behind the barn (hmm...a free-to-air C-band receiver and maybe a tracker for those "black" satellites).

It's probably a bad idea for a former SIGINT weenie to have a bunch of unused parabolic dishes and lots of free time...

Also, VZW's "unlimited" plan has a 6 GB bandwidth limit last I checked. For normal use this is no issue, but if you do regular downloading... you might want to use a different carrier.

That's pretty much why Satellite service is a no go for me.

Regardless Verizon & Nextel are both squarely on the "no way in hell" list.