Cell Phone Booster Vs Microcell or Femtocell Signal Boosters

Microcell is what AT&T calls it, Femtocell is what T-mobiles calls it, the device that is offered as a solution if you complain about too much dropped calls or bad reception in your home. One would think that, if a phone company is calling this to be a solution for bad reception then it better work for solving bad reception, except it is not! Both Microcell and Femtocell requires cable or high speed broadband connection to function. But even when you have this high speed connection, this solution falls way short of solving cell phone signal issues. The reason this solution falls on its face is because it relies on converting weak cell phone signal into strong WiFi signal and converting back into strong cell phone signal.

Weak Cell Phone Signal —–> Strong WiFi Signal—–> Strong cell phone signal

The cell phones communication has its own language or protocol, while the WiFi signal has its own TCP/IP internet protocol. Basically the Microcell or Femtocell has to perform two tasks, one is to increase signal and two is to act as a translator between two sets of protocol or languages in simple term. Albeit the deice does a good job of increasing a week signal into a strong cellphone signal, it falls short on the translator part where the Microcell fails miserably. You might see that you have 5 full bars on your cell phone but you will still drop calls beyond disbelief, the reason being that when the translator tried to convert the wifi signal back to cell phone signal, it dropped the ball and you as a result drop the call.

A cell phone signal booster on the other hand does not have to translate like the Microcell or Femtocell, because it improves the signal in the same frequency the cell phones operate no need to convert between different protocols. Hence the cell phone signal boosters solve poor signal troubles.