Home cellular repeater

So soon I am going to be moving in to a new home and the cell signal is terrible at best indoors. On the good side of the house I get about -102dBm(maybe one bar and only "1X") and on the bad side even worse(signal drops completely).

On my droid I walked around outside of the house and got up on a ladder with the signal meter up trying to see if I could get anything better outdoors. In very specific places I could get the phone to pick up 3 bars of "3g" and get some wheres in the range of -95dBm for cell signal, maybe a little better.

Now for the past few days I have been doing quite a bit of research on cellular repeaters and I think I know what I am going to purchase but I wanted to know if anyone here had any experience with these devices.

The one I am looking at is zBoost YX545 with the upgraded antenna zBoost YX039

There is a pole out in the yard that I plan to attach the antenna to and then run the coax into a central room to the home.

If anyone has any input Id greatly appreciate it.

Just call the cell provider and complain about service coverage. I got a free repeater from them, with service.

I know Verizon, and Sprint both have them. They just attach to your network and your good to go.

i've had an actual verizon network extender for about a year now. best thing i've done in regards to cell service in awhile. the verizon rep will tell you it covers "about 5000 sq ft" or some such, which in reality and depending on walls etc has reached to the end of my driveway. the ONLY issue with it is it requires a GPS signal to operate, which can sometimes drop depending on weather(think satellite TV type dropping) otherwise its about as simple and stupid as plug and pray.

Well that would be great and I thought about that, but the problem is the internet there is shotty as well, currently there is only satellite because of the location so those are out.

Thanks though.

I think Im going to pull the trigger and pick those up and see how they work. If they dont Ill return them and go back to the drawing board.

Ouch to the price tag on that item.
Please update this with your experience with it once you get a chance to evaluate the performance.

I work in an old building in a river valley. There's ok signal on the top floors and even a little bit outside on the sidewalks, but none inside. Everyone's battery would drain during the workday simply because it was constantly searching for a signal.

I started looking at those repeaters, and eventually our facilities department had someone come in and put in a real "professional" repeater. It worked ok at first, but now it's not much better than it was. I think a lot of other employees noticed that they had better signal, so they started leaving their phones on too, overloading the repeater. It shows better signal, but it likes to not actually transfer data and randomly cut in and out now.

Like stkshft said, it might be worth complaining to the carrier. In some cases, they'll give you free or cheaper repeaters or femtocells if your coverage sucks. Might not get anything usable out of it, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

I've been researching this as well and am having trouble finding a decent source of info that isnt related to a specific product (say a forum on the topic or some such)

I picked up a wilson 811210 from a job site a while back (surplus from a previous install), and would like to use it to help a friend in a rural area.

From the install manual, there are restrictions on this device relating to gain of an antenna to be used with it (<6.12dBi, p.2). Is this restriction related to the intended use of the device (in a vehicle)? ie. If I install the unit in a building is it permissible to use an antenna with higher gain like this or this? Is there any reason this unit could not be used with an omni indoor antenna rather than directly connecting it to the phone?

edit: found a useful place