Cell phone booster

Hi @arnzng, We understand your concern. We're here to help you.

To activate your Cell Booster:

@arnzng  Which cellular booster did you get? AT&T sells a femtocell which they call the Cell Booster but it is not a cellular booster. I depends on your internet connection to connect to AT&T's Mobility Network, and there are quite a few caveats to getting it to work, especially in very rural areas. If you did purchase a cellular booster (WeBoost for example), AT&T is having issues registering them because there is confusion on whether AT&T needs to do that anymore. And, if you cellular signal is as poor as you indicate, it might be difficult for you to just a decent signal to boost.

Read thru my Cell Booster Tech Guide, which is the first link in my sig line for information on AT&T's Cell Booster, or read thru my Celluar Booster Guide, which is the second link in my sig line for information on cellular boosters.

If you have any questions about either one, just post back. The response from Susan @ATTHelp is for AT&T's Cell Booster which I don't think will work well, if at all for you just given the brief information you posted about living in a very rural area.

So I live 2.4 miles from an Att tower but have zero service. I have currently used a griddy Antenna and surecell fusion 5x. Looking at cell mapper the "plotted/recorded" area of signal is just south of me 1 mile. I don't expect lightning speeds but just want usable speeds. I do also have a weboost home (cheaper home version) that we tested and with only setting it outside without aiming and installing was able to get roughly 93 db

Hello @arnzng,

I understand that you have a network coverage issue in order to process the next step of troubleshooting steps. Please let us know your ZIP Code and we'll take a look at your connectivity and see how we can fix it.

Feel free to reach out to us.

AbigailM AT&T Community Forum Specialist

@arnzng  Ok, so you are using a cellular booster, not AT&T's femtocell (misleadingly called the Cell Booster). If you read my Cell Booster Guide, you'll see that you need at least one and preferably two bars of consistent signal strength. Some of the companies listed offer professional installation. They will use testing equipment to determine frequencies, bands, strength, and signal propagation. They will then install an antenna on your roof pointed in the right direction and the install an antenna inside your house (cabled to the rooftop antenna) to broadcast the signal in your home that you can use. WeBoost is one of the companies listed.

With -93dB a good cellular booster properly installed may be what works for you. What kind of internet service do you have?

I currently have DSL max speed 15 mbps down and 1 mbps up. Zip code is 62037. Ideally I wanted this booster to help signal enough and try to obtain att air, but asking about the limitations whether bandwidth, regional etc there was no answer. The tower is eNB ID 242952 (macro) if that helps any. I know in town I've been able to get 130 mbps down.

Hi @arnzng, Thank you for reaching out to us! We understand that you've question related to AT&T Internet Air, and we're here to guide you in the right direction.

We have a dedicated team for AT&T Internet Air, and we recommend that you connect with our AT&T Internet Air customer service team at 800.288.2020. They are available 10am-7pm Central, 7 business days a week.

Please feel free to reach back to us if you have any further questions.

We hope this information is helpful, and thanks for reaching out to AT&T Community Forums!

Leon, AT&T Community Forum Specialist

@arnzng  If you read my Cell Booster Tech Guide you'll see that the minimum speeds for the Cell Booster is 5Mbps down 1Mbps up, but the recommended  download speed is 100Mbps 5Mbps up. So, any speeds between 5Mbps up to 100Mbps should be sufficient but if you have DSL at "up to" 15Mbps down and 1Mbps up (I think you turned that around in you response 😉), speeds are no known to fluctuate given the nature or the connection technology so while the Cell Booster MAY work, call quality is gong to suffer.

Another issue you will have with the Cell Booster is location verification. The FCC requires that your physical location match the GPS coordinates that the Cell Booster will send, but rural locations have difficult with that because the house address doesn't always match the physical location. USPS, FedEx, UPS, may not have any issues getting mail and packages to you but AT&T uses a different locational database that isn't always updated from the third parties that they get the address information from. Is your house address a route number, road number, etc?

AT&T is pushing their new Internet Air product. It is still very new and, unfortunately there are still questions around its reliability. That will probably get all worked out as more and more units are installed and issues arise which get resolved. If you do consider Internet Air read carefully the requirements for reasonable use AND the return policy/window. AT&T Internet Air is fixed wireless using the 5G cellular band so you need a good 5G cellular connection.

Can you just also send GPS coordinates with the registration? Also, I'm not sure who to talk or webpage to populate the request. Any help would be grateful. Also included is a screen shot of my current speeds.