Have you ever noticed that the signal level on your mobile phone is not as strong when you are indoors? Some places are worse than others. Even your home is not immune to this problem. You can be outside on the driveway, walk into your house and find that the signal level has decreased. The person you were talking to can no longer hear you or at the very least the signal is breaking up. There is an indoor signal coverage solution for this problem. However for most people it just is not economic.
Hotels and Big Box Stores – Indoor Signal Coverage Solution
Sometimes it is in a hotel that has the same problem. Or perhaps one of those large box stores that are almost everywhere. These big box stores are in fact the worst places to be as far as cell phone or mobile coverage. They are steel framed and they are clad with steel sheeting in some cases or at least steel re-enforcing bars. This acts as a huge attenuator for the mobile signals. You just cannot get good coverage when you are inside these buildings.
Solutions for Indoor Coverage
Fortunately there are indoor signal coverage solutions to this problem although it does cost money to fix the problem. Essentially the owners of these buildings must install repeaters that will capture the signal outside and then rebroadcast the same signal outside. The same is true in the reverse. This system must pick up the signal indoors from the cell phones and rebroadcast them outdoors to be picked up by the cell towers that dot the landscape.
It is actually a lot more complicated than that, but this is the general idea. Store owners will be willing to do this only if there is an advantage for them, i.e. it brings them more business, otherwise there is no incentive for them to even consider this kind of expense.
The carriers are the group that might consider installing this equipment. However there has to be an advantage for them as well. In this case they want their customers to have more connectivity which will generate more income for the carrier. If you carrier does not see a significant increase in increased calls, text messages or data transmission, they will not be interested in developing and installing this type of solution either for indoor signal coverage solutions.
Consumers also must be aware that each carrier must implement this sort of indoor signal coverage solution for their customers, since each carrier uses a different frequency so one system will not support another carriers customers since they operate on a different frequency.
So for the most part, consumers are going to be stuck with this problem until carriers build out their networks further with stronger signals in some cases and more towers as well as small cell sites, including indoor coverage solutions. If you have experienced this problem, leave us a comment. Maybe one of the carriers will take note and focus on this major issue for consumer mobile coverage. For more information about wireless coverage indoors, click here.
November 12th, 2012 on 2:02 pm
there are far too many times when my cell phone does not work inside a building. I wish they would fix this problem so that we can use our cell phones everywhere.