As-per the title, I'm looking into buying a cell phone repeater for my downstairs. I get very little service, and often do not receive calls or a lot of texts because of it. My phone literally will not work in 1/2 of my room by my computer, or other parts of the downstairs. While looking at repeaters I found http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Extenders-YX500-Cel-Booster-Coverage/dp/B000E14G7S/ref=sr_1_30?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1280981522&sr=1-30 and was wondering if it would work with my phone. I don't have a ton of money to spend on one, and if anyone has bought a repeater and has any suggestions I would like to know.

My phone is from US Cellular which runs on the CDMA network, and i found the frequency here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies Im hoping the one i posted will work, cause the sooner i order this the better. But if anyone knows of better ones Ill be happy to check them out.

From the reviews, that product sounds decent, but not a miracle if you're expecting to suddenly get 5 bars. It also has a limitation that it shouldn't receive its own signal, so you need to put it far away from its own antenna. If it's your main option, though, I guess it's worth a try.

Many cars and SUVs nowadays have built-in cell phone repeaters. Check your local junkyard to see if you can remove one from a dead car. While you're at it, you can also pick up some relays, actuators, lights, radios, and anything else you want for your personal electronics stash.

I can't find any articles or sources on this, would you mind sharing?

I don't know the specifics, but my mom's 2001 Ford Escape has a small dongle on the rear driver's side window with antennas on either side, which amplifies cell phone signals so you don't lose bars when driving.

No it doesn't. Not sure who told you what that dongle does, but they were definitely wrong. Afaik no car has a cell repeater in it because that would be stupid. If the repeater can get a signal, so can your cell phone.

@rcfreak0: Talk to US Cellular and see if they have a femtocell you can rent. Sprint and Verizon Wireless (which afaik the only two running a CDMA network) both have femtocells for customers with crappy reception.

Fist off lol necro bump. And thanks Kllrnohj, Ill have to ask them. I did buy a cell phone repeater but lately it hasn't been working at all and i only get reception in 2 parts of my room and i cant keep it near my desk 'cause it freaks out and wont send anything. That would be nice if they did, im sick of putting my phone in random places in my room to get a little bit of cell reception. Also since i wrote this i got a new phone, a HTC Merge if that matters at all.

Sadly USCC is a much smaller CDMA carrier than Sprint or Verizon so I doubt that it is worth to them to pay the infastructure setup and maintainence costs to support femtocell's on their network. That said I would at least drop by one of their stores and ask on the off chance that they do becuase it is garrenteed to work unlike a range extender that you paid for out of pocket.

I'm pretty sure USCC doesn't actually run a network and just pays for access to either Sprint's or Verizon's network, hence why they might have a femtocell.

I'm now thinking this was a cleverly disguised spam bot.

They're starting to blend in!

My God, soon all spambots will start giving reasonable and intelligent responses to people's queries! We won't know who's a cylon and who isn't! It'll be the end of the world as we know it!!!

Oinorite?

oh dear... xkcd got it right.. soon the bots will overpower us all!

Users trying to follow that link in his post, quoted by qazz42 as I've deleted his, will go to a cool page

I cleaned up the rest of the links from the spambot being quoted; don't want to depress our PageRank too much!