Recommendations for Cellular Signal Repeaters?

itwerx asks: "Like most folks these days I have a cell phone and indoor reception problems, especially in my house which is behind a ridge from most of the carriers in my area. So, I'm looking for an indoor wireless repeater (not a plug-in amp). There are a lot of them out there ranging from $300-$3000+, but for every article, forum or newsgroup posting proclaiming the relative merits of this brand or model over another I find another post saying that they suck. A couple of units I'm looking at are the Wi-Ex YX500 series and some of the ones made by Wilson Electronics (not providing direct links so as to avoid boosting their Google ratings). Has anybody here used these, or junked them in favor of something better?"

You're going about this all wrong

[Dryanta]

Your perspective is kind of dumb when you pay a provider every month for service that does not do what you want. I have no idea how wireless providers tricked users into thinking signal problems are ALWAYS their fault. Just a tip to the wise, cell phone towers are normally broadcasting at less than 50% of capacity due to the fact they are terrified of the FCC, even though they have the licenses. I have cingular, and my wife has cingular. Both of my bosses, and everybody in my office has cingular. I called 611 on each of the phones, and filed a complaint with tech support about the 'poor service' in the area from five or six accounts. I also had one rep pull up a map and tell me the tower I was closest to. Then I found out that I was getting poor signal standing right next to it. I am a wireless engineer, so I made a couple guesses as to what could be causing the trouble (water in the fittings, disconnected pigtail, local source of interference from another carrier) and used the county locator service to find the ph# of the primary point of contact for the tower. I called the local cingular office, advised them of my situation, my trouble ticket numbers, the location of the tower, and my findings. The next day, they pointed a sector right at me and dialed up the gain. Now, I have 3-4 bars inside when I used to have to 1-2 outside. This might sound like I went to a lot of effort or something, but it took 2-3 hours tops - and now my calls don't drop!

Re:You're going about this all wrong

[itwerx]

thinking signal problems are ALWAYS their fault.

Ordinarily I would indeed be chasing this up the tech support chain but service is great everywhere else and I've looked at the tower maps and it's pretty clear that it's simply a matter of geography and that it only affects a fairly small area, i.e. not something I'd ask them to put in a whole tower for.
      However, that said, I may be getting something similar to the response you got, and this may be a useful approach for others with the same problem.
      I went to the website and filled out a customer service form, (not a support ticket), explaining the situation and asking what repeater/booster brand/model they recommended. The next day I got a call on my cell from an engineer who explained in no uncertain terms that they did not want me to install any sort of repeater/booster under any circumstances. They then asked if I was in the affected location at that moment, (I was), and while on the line did a bunch of tests confirming the problem, opened a ticket and said it should be fixed in two weeks and that they would keep the ticket open for me to call back if it wasn't any better.
      It turns out that no matter how small an area is affected they would rather fix it from their end than have someone installing some random repeater/booster as they apparently have no end of problems with people doing exactly that and screwing up the network! (Kudos to the poster who mentioned potential FCC issues above).
      Now we don't know how things will turn out yet, my reception is still just as bad, but it's been barely a week so we'll just have to wait and see.

      So the upshot of it is that if reception sucks in your area, ask them nicely what they recommend for third-party solutions and they just might get all excited and actually fix it themselves.