Having poor mobile coverage inside your home is a problem, although we usually have a fixed internet connection and a WiFi connection to a router to have an internet connection if we have poor coverage in our home.
But without mobile coverage, it is not possible to receive or make calls.
If you are in a village, if your house has very thick walls, or if your house is in an area with very poor mobile coverage, the best solution would be a mobile phone signal booster Vodafone to improve the coverage inside your house.
Want to know all about signal boosters for mobile networks?
What is a mobile signal booster, and why do you need it?
A mobile signal booster is a device formed by several components that will connect directly to the operator’s antenna and repeat the signal received inside our house, with the aim that we can achieve the maximum possible coverage and the best signal quality.
This type of mobile network booster should be located outside our house, at least the outdoor antenna, to achieve the best possible reception of our carrier’s antenna.
Placing the amplifier inside our house is useless because the resulting coverage is very low, and we will hardly notice any improvement in the user experience.
A mobile signal booster consists of various components, all of which are absolutely necessary for the normal functioning of the device and so that we can get better mobile coverage to make calls and be able to connect to the Internet via 4G without problems.
These components are as follows:
Outdoor antenna: usually directional or omnidirectional, this antenna should be located outside our house, either on the roof or on the facade, to receive the best possible signal from the antenna of the operator serving our area.
It receives the signal that comes from the telephone antenna and sends it through the antenna cable to the signal amplifier.
Signal amplifier: This is the most important device of the installation, its purpose is to amplify, stabilize and distribute the signal throughout our house with the help of an internal antenna.
Before buying a signal booster, we should consider what frequency bands it can work in, not all boosters can work in all the bands used by operators, it is advisable to use band 8 (900 MHz) and band 20 (800 MHz) which work best indoors and are most common for 4G networks outside of cities.
It is also very important in which frequency bands we have coverage with our operator, it is possible that in our particular location, we do not have 4G coverage in the 800 MHz bands, but we do in another band.
For this reason, we need to know in which frequency range we are currently connecting.
Indoor antenna: this antenna is connected to the signal booster, its purpose is to provide mobile coverage within our own house, that is, our mobile communication will connect to this indoor antenna, which in turn is connected to the signal booster, and this to the operator’s antenna thanks to an external antenna.
Antenna cable: the amplifier must be connected to the antennas (external and internal antennas) through an antenna cable, this component is critical, it must be a good quality cable and not too long, so as not to lose the signal through the antenna cable itself.
So we learned what a mobile signal amplifier and its components are. Now let’s look at the frequency bands that we may need to amplify.
Which mobile frequency bands are most often used?
As a rule, mobile repeaters work with one or more frequency bands, before buying any booster, for example from UCtel, it is advisable to see what frequency band we currently use in our home with our smartphone.
Depending on the areas and the mobile operator, we may not have coverage of band 20 (800 MHz), but we have coverage of band 1 (2,100 MHz), for this reason, it is very important to look at the frequency range where we have coverage in our home.
The main frequency bands are as follows:
- 20 or 800 MHz band: provides 4G communication in cities and small towns, it is a low frequency, so it has very good penetration in closed rooms.
- Band 3 or 1,800 MHz: Provides 4G connectivity in cities and towns with many residents.
- Band 1 or 2.100 MHz: This band is also used for 4G networks in large cities.
Another widely used band is band 8 with 900 MHz, although it is usually used for 3G connectivity outside of cities, this band also has very good penetration and is able to cover large areas with the same mobile phone antenna.
Once we know the frequency band used by our operator in our area, we need to know the signal we have in the area where we are going to place the outdoor antenna, it would be best to place it on high areas or roofs, it may also be a good idea to put it on the mast of the TV antenna if you have one at home.
Now let’s see what kind of mobile signal booster we need.
Which mobile phone signal booster Vodafone do I need?
Once we know the frequency range in which the WiFi signal booster we are going to buy should work, we need to know how much power we will need in the said booster to get good coverage. Power is another very important factor when buying a particular device.
In general, we find two cases:
Good mobile coverage away from home, but poor inside the home. This is usually due to the thickness of facades and building materials, in these cases, you will not need an amplifier that is too powerful, because you have good mobile coverage outside.
Poor mobile coverage outdoors and indoors.
In this case, you will need a powerful amplifier, because even outside the house without walls between them, you will get good coverage. In these cases, it is because the telephone antenna is far away or there are obstructions such as buildings.
After you have selected all the components of the booster, you will need to install them yourself, although this is not very difficult, since the configuration of these devices is very simple.
So as you can see, we have to consider several important points to buy the perfect signal booster from, for example, UCtel, without spending too much of the budget.