Why Femto cells does not stand a chance against cell phone boosters?

What is a Femto cell? Well Femto cells have been in the market for quite some time. If you called your cell phone provider and complained about poor cell phone reception, they will send you one after much deliberation, why? Because it really does not or will not provide you any solution and the chances are that you can get more frustrated.

Prerequisites for a Femto cell operation:

a) Strong broadband connection or high speed data connection.
b) Sign up with the provider who provides the Femto cell.
c) Each individual user needs to be registered by the admin, usually the owner of the device. Every time a guest wants t make or receive a call at your location, they need to be signed ON and signed OFF when they leave.
d) Expect dropped or poor signal strength during high traffic time of the day. Usually during the night,when everyone is home browsing on the internet . The Femto cell phone boosters use the bandwidth of the broadband and their by hindering the internet connection as well as the cell phone connection by clubbing them together
e) Not all Femto cell phone boosters work with data, the Verizon’s network extender does not work for 3G, leave alone 4G.

The above mentioned limitations are just the symptoms of a solution that was devised to solve a problem without properly understanding that problem.

Here is what a Femto cell phone booster or a network extender try to do. When a user experience poor cell phone reception inside their home or office, the Femto cell uses the available WiFi signal to solve its cell phone signal issues. The Femto cell uses the WiFi and coverts into cell phone signal. The underlying problem with this approach is that the WiFi signal operates at a different frequency then that of a cell phone signal and before the signal gets communicated to the respective cell tower belonging to the respective carrier, the frequencies must be converted back to match the towers frequency. As you can already see this involves too many handshakes (term used in the industry, when signals or data gets transferred from one entity to another entity) . This introduces unwanted delay in the network or simply takes too long that the cell phone provider network simply thinks that the conversation is over and drop the call. This is not just theory, but real life experiences that users complain. As stated earlier, the problem with this approach is due to poor understanding of the problem to begin with.

The Proper Solution:
Unlike the Femto cells the cell phone boosters approach this problem by focusing on the root of the problem and not on the symptom like the Femto cell’s do. The cell phone booster talks directly to the cell hone tower instead of the WiFi network. By talking direct with the cell phone tower, the booster solution avoids unnecessary handshake to convert WiFi signal into cell phone signal.

The external antenna does the basic data gathering work of harnessing signal that is available at a given location. The antennas are either omni-directional or uni-directional like a yagi antenna. The antenna then communicates the procured signal to the cell phone amplifier via a low loss cable.

The amplifier takes the signal provided by the external antenna and amplifies it to levels that are optimal for the cell phone device, weather it may be your handset or tablet or ATM machine or any device that operates on the cell phone frequency. This amplified cell phone signal gets broadcast inside the building via an internal antenna.

The above mentioned reasons are why a cell phone booster solution is better to fix cell phone signal problems, then using a Femto cell solution.

Internal antennas are either mounted on the ceiling or on the wall. This last piece of the 3 part device (external antenna, amplifier and internal antenna) ensures that the amplified cell phone signal gets distributed inside the building and create a holistic signal presence inside the building to make the cell signal available in each nook and corner of the building.

One of the biggest advantage of a cell phone booster over network extender or Femto cell phone solution is that you are not tied to one signal provider. Your cell phone signal is improved for all the carriers and does not limit the number of users that can access the improved signal like the network