What is it? It's best at removing money from your wallet and putting it in the wallets of those selling these items. It doesn't really do anything. Save your money.

Are there any cell phone antennas/booster that actually do work to improve cell phone reception (Motorola V400 phone/Cingular subscription) in your home. We get "1 bar" type reception in our home. If we walk 200 feet up the street, we get 3 bars.

Is there a way to effectively boost my in-home reception?

My mobile phone (Samsung phone on Verizon) is very sensitive to location in the house. Service can vary from "none" to three bars depending on where I am in the house. Do you get "1 bar" reception all over the house? Right outside the house? Are you tending to use it next to a generator of electronic noise? (My phone has no service near my laptop.)

The fact is that sometimes you just are in a low area of cell reception. Another carrier's antenna may be better situated and would work better.

We get one bar throughout house. Occassionally it will blip up to 2 bars. The reception does not sem to be impacted by electronic noise.

We seem to be in a low area of cell reception. Guests with other carriers (Verizon, tmobile, sprint) have the same issue at our home.

If I walk 100-200 feet up the street, I come out of the low lying area that our house is in and get 3 bar reception.

thats the same with mine a sony/ericson phone it almost useless in the house, but walk up the block a house in either direction and i have good reception. i also have cingular. i got better service in the middle of the everglades than i get in the middle of my home in the detroit suburbs. there must be a way too boost the signal. its a real pain since i dont have a conventional phone.

I find that phones with antennas that actually extend beyond the phone usually give better reception than those that have the antenna completely inside the phone where you can't see it. You might ask the people at the Cingular store which phones they offer that tend to get the best reception. Often the people know which ones are best in weak signal areas. With Sprint, the phones do vary significantly in terms of signal quality.

I know you can install an amplifier and an external antenna for a cell phone. I've seen these for use in cars. They boost the power and have a better antenna that you could also put higher up. Kind of defeats the purpose of a "mobile phone" though if you have to hook it to an amplifier to use it in your house.

If it were me I'd just call SBC and get a regular phone. To me, cell phones still aren't reliable enough to replace wired phones, even though I know a lot of people do use them that way.

I have ATT and got a microcell. It plugs into your home Ethernet and makes a mini cell tower in your house. Works great.

Had zero reception and now I have full bars.

There are also cell boosters that are just antennas that transmit.

Here is a link that might be useful: ATT Microcell

I have both the ATT microcell and a Verizon network extender. My work phone is AT&T and family is on Verizon. My home is a 0-1 bar deadspot on both networks.

Both extenders act as small cell towers and route all calls and text over my Internet connection. They work great on all 3 floors of my house.

Only issue is the cost of each. Work paid for the AT&T microcell.

My cheapo Samsung always shows very good signal strength and always has lousy sound. Then one day I got a call on it while in a Costco and was amazed at the fidelity. Weird.

installed an at&t microcell recently and works great. just don't pay for it yourself. demand that AT&T give you billing credit or send a free one. after all it is their issue that you can't access a nearby tower. threaten to switch to verizon if necessary - worked for me.

w/the microcell i get 5 bars and 3G via the ethernet connection where before i had "Searching...."