[SOLVED] How Can I Boost Signal A Very Long Range?

[Ari_]

My family lives at a very rural farm and have almost zero internet and no service at all.
We are looking into boosting service but there are a lot of questions about it I need to ask.
We have zero service in our house (we live in a hollow). But if we walk up onto our hill we can get about 3 bars.
Would there be any way to boost our signal from the top of the hill, down to our house?

Additional info:
There is not a cell tower for at least 12 miles from what we can tell.
Our house is about 2500 square feet.

 

[Barty1884]

I'm assuming it's a cellphone that get's a signal when you walk up the hill?

Given the compact size of a cellphone & it's antenna range, it stands to reason that a dedicated antenna/booster could pick up a signal at your home location.

As far as cost or whether the result would justify the cost, I'm not sure.

 

[bill001g]

This quickly gets into what can be done and what is legal to do. There are passive systems where you would put a antenna on the hill and the run a cable to the house and put another antenna in the house. Since this has no electronics it tends to be allowed.

Anything else involves amplification and transmission on licensed radio frequencies. Since the phone company paid the government for the right to use those frequencies you are not allowed to use them unless the phone company gives you permission. Generally that means installing something you purchase from the phone company.

You can buy lots of stuff that is not legal to use and many times is not even fcc certified direclty from china Part of what the fcc does in addition to not allowing you to do this is they protect you from buying equipment that does not actually do what it says it does. So you can take the risk, you may get ripped off. You may cause interference with other cell phone equipment and get a huge fine. If you get lucky it might work. The cell provider likely will be able to tell but if it does not cause them harm they will ignore it. If it causes them trouble they will report you and likely be told to quit now or else.

Now there might be some way to say put a cell router on the hill and then some form of VoIP or use Wifi rather than cell technology from the hill back to your house. That though is not what you were asking for.

 

[Ari_]

This quickly gets into what can be done and what is legal to do. There are passive systems where you would put a antenna on the hill and the run a cable to the house and put another antenna in the house. Since this has no electronics it tends to be allowed.

Anything else involves amplification and transmission on licensed radio frequencies. Since the phone company paid the government for the right to use those frequencies you are not allowed to use them unless the phone company gives you permission. Generally that means installing something you purchase from the phone company.

You can buy lots of stuff that is not legal to use and many times is not even fcc certified direclty from china Part of what the fcc does in addition to not allowing you to do this is they protect you from buying equipment that does not actually do what it says it does. So you can take the risk, you may get ripped off. You may cause interference with other cell phone equipment and get a huge fine. If you get lucky it might work. The cell provider likely will be able to tell but if it does not cause them harm they will ignore it. If it causes them trouble they will report you and likely be told to quit now or else.

Now there might be some way to say put a cell router on the hill and then some form of VoIP or use Wifi rather than cell technology from the hill back to your house. That though is not what you were asking for.

So we could just buy a normal cell booster and put it on the hill? Then run a wire back to the house?

 

[bill001g]

Not sure what you mean a "cell" boaster. Anything that has electronics in it likely is not legal. Even if you ignore that you would need to get power.

What would be allowed would be to somehow protect a mobile broadband router. You could use a USB modem on something like a asus router also. You could run a ethernet cable back to the house. This would give you expensive internet service. To get cell services you would put what is called a micro cell in your house. The phone company sells these. A micro cell is kinda a scam but when you don't get coverage you have little option. It uses a vpn over the internet to make a small cell tower just for you. The thing is you would be paying them for your cell plan on your phone and then paying them again because they are using the expensive internet you put up on the hill to provide the cell service. So if you don't care about the cost it is a solution that will work.

 

[hang-the-9]

My family lives at a very rural farm and have almost zero internet and no service at all.
We are looking into boosting service but there are a lot of questions about it I need to ask.
We have zero service in our house (we live in a hollow). But if we walk up onto our hill we can get about 3 bars.
Would there be any way to boost our signal from the top of the hill, down to our house?

Additional info:
There is not a cell tower for at least 12 miles from what we can tell.
Our house is about 2500 square feet.

You may need to get satellite service. Then for phone connections you may be able to get a femto cell from your service provider that will use the satellite internet service to link to the cell phone service.

 

[smithadamtries]

How about contacting your provider and paying them to get the services at your place? Also, like @hang-the-9 said, try contacting a satellite service provider!

All the other workarounds would involve something or other that's illegal!

 

[hang-the-9]

How about contacting your provider and paying them to get the services at your place? --- snip ---

This would cost a lot of money, it's almost never something people can afford, depending on the distance it is many thousands or dollars, read some of the posts here https://community.spiceworks.com/to...000-ft-drive-way-with-poles-house-wiring-done

If you are talking about the phone company adding a tower for one farm, that would cost $150,000+