If your home or office suffers from low-quality voice calls, a femtocell can make a huge difference by routing the traffic over your wired internet line, rather than through the air.

Of course, if external coverage is patchy, this may not help: don’t rely on one of these to keep you connected if you’re, say, driving through the Scottish Highlands.Ī different type of booster is the femtocell – basically a compact mobile base station that connects to a fixed broadband connection. It consists of an external antenna connected to a cradle inside the vehicle, so again you get roughly the same signal strength inside your car as you would outside. The idea is that your mobile phones and other cellular devices can connect to the indoor antenna and get coverage that’s at least as good as if they were located outside.Ī low-gain mobile repeater works on a similar principle, but is designed to improve the signal inside a moving vehicle.

It normally consists of three parts: a large “downlink” antenna that's located outdoors, a smaller “uplink” antenna inside the building and an amplifier that relays the signal from one to the other. There are four basic types of booster available in the UK for individual use:Ī static indoor repeater is designed to improve coverage inside a building. If you can barely make a call without the sound breaking up, or if your data connection keeps timing out, a mobile signal booster could help. READ NEXT: Best broadband providers How to choose the best mobile signal booster for you What does a mobile signal booster do?Ī booster is designed to improve your mobile coverage in areas where the signal is weak, such as inside a house or office building. Here’s our expert guide to mobile signal boosters, plus our pick of the best mobile signal boosters on the market. If you’re not careful, you could be exposing yourself to a telling off, a nasty fine or even worse. And while certain boosters are licence-exempt, meaning anyone can own and operate them in the UK, there are legal restrictions that you need to be aware of. However, it’s important to pick the right sort of booster, as there are several different types. You can buy boosters from numerous online stores and installation doesn’t have to be difficult, either.

But you can banish the problem once and for all by buying your own mobile signal booster. A flaky mobile signal can be infuriating and the network operators are rarely much help.

Best cell phone booster for rural areas