Cellphone reception in the basement

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Does anyone know of a way to get cellphone reception in the basement? We live in an old 1920’s home and cannot use our cellphones in the basement where our family room is located. The phones just say “No Service”. You think there would be something along the lines of a router like you use for wireless Internet that you could put upstairs that would direct the signal down. We ask at the cellphone service and they just say they don’t know of anything! Any ideas??</p>

2

<p>Look at the Thinkgeek website. They have something to increase cell phone coverage. It’s a great site for gadgets that I have often used.</p>

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<p>This might be a repeater:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cell-phone/9823/[/url]”>http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cell-phone/9823/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Two corded options:

  1. Get something like a cradle for a car that has an external antenna. Mount the antenna high in the house and run it to the cradle.</p>

<p>2) There are some cell phones that have home docking stations. When you get home, you put it in the dock. Then you can use regular phones throughout the house to make/receive calls through the cell phone. Those regular phones would have to be connected to the dock with regular phone wire (or you can connect the dock to a cordless phone base station).</p>

4

<p>Depends upon who your cell phone company is - but there is this device called a femtocell that acts as a mini cell tower and plugs into your high speed internet connection. </p>

<p>Here is a general overview article from earlier this year.</p>

<p>[Verizon</a> getting on femtocell bandwagon with Sprint, AT&T - Ars Technica](<a href=“Verizon getting on femtocell bandwagon with Sprint, AT&T | Ars Technica”>Verizon getting on femtocell bandwagon with Sprint, AT&T | Ars Technica)</p>

5

<p>We use Alltel, which I guess will soon be Alltel/Verizon. </p>

<p>The ThinkGeek gadget says you have to have at least one bar of cellphone reception because

That would have been a great option and was along the lines of what I was thinking.</p>

<p>My husband is a physician and receives all his calls/texts from the hospital on his cell. Everytime the thing beeps he has to run upstairs to get the message and return the call!</p>

<p>All good suggestions I will check into - thank you!</p>