Poor cellular coverage in your area ?

Published by jfn on September 10, 2018

Services like Sensorly and OpenSignal can help you identify cellular coverage issues in your area.

Both services have mobile apps allowing you to use your mobile phone to scan an area and report back on the findings.

Solving the issue by asking the carriers to improve their coverage is often a long wait, however there are other options available.

First of all you can compare carriers and verify whether another carrier offer better coverage in your area, or alternatively you can look into a few alternatives :

WiFi calling. This is now possible with several of the carriers and use in-building WiFi to carry the signal, so if you have good WiFi coverage and a mobile phone with WiFi, this may be an option, however it’s typically tied to single subscribers and cannot span an entire company. Company solutions usually require a full distributed antenna system.
Micro-cell. Most carriers offer this solution for single subscribers. It’s a small transceiver working on the frequencies associated with the carrier, but with a limited coverage that will span only a small area (typically a house). It will use an Internet connection to carry the signal back to the carrier. This is often the best solution when living in an area where there’s no cellular coverage at all, or where WiFi is not an option.
Cell phone signal boosters (or extenders). These devices will take whatever cellular signal there is and try to boost it locally to allow mobile phones to get better reception. These devices do not require Internet nor WiFi, however they do require a cellular signal to be present. These are often useful when the signal inside the office or house is poor, but good outside or on the roof. Typically these devices are installed with an external antenna on the roof to ensure optimal coverage and there are various models available on the market to cover even larger areas (within FCC regulation limits).

At DATAradical we have experience in analyzing coverage for both cellular and WiFi and can help recommend the best solution for you.