Day: August 18, 2008

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Boost Your Cell Phone Coverage

Cell Phone Boost That Works

You might have seen stickers that you put on the back of your phone. They supposedly improve coverage, but they work just about as well as hope. This is better than that. It’s the zBoost Cell Phone Signal Booster.

The zBoost Signal Booster is equipment that you need to install at your home or office (now there is a car model too).  It consists of two parts:

  • Antenna to pick up the signal. It is in 16 inch by 1 inch PVC pipe
  • Booster that you place where you need the signal to go. It is about the size of a router or cable modem.

The antenna and booster are connected by a coaxial cable. There are different zBoost models costing $215-$310 depending on the cell carriers you need boosted. Be sure to get the right model for your needs.

If you read the reviews on Amazon, you will see that most people either love it or hate it. This is based on the individual situation in a particular location. You need to have coverage somewhere so that you have a signal to boost. The ideal location is typically on a roof or a window. Then you put the booster where you need coverage, which is recommended to be at least 25 feet away from the antenna in order to reduce interference.

My Experience

I just installed the zBoost for someone in Arlington, Virginia. It was the dual-band 800 and 1900 MHz XY510 model because they have iPhone 3G’s, which use both bands depending on if they are on AT&T’s Edge or 3G network. Their living room went from no coverage to 5 bars. Be sure to follow the instructions closely and experiment with placement. In my case, changes of 1 foot for the receiving antenna made a difference of 3 bars.

If your home or office has poor cell phone coverage, this could be well worth the investment.

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Problems for Pandora and other US Web Radio Stations

Pandora is a web site that provides streaming music to your computer, your iPhone, and other devices. It creates customized stations based on music you like and if you give a song a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”. You can click on a song you like to go to Amazon or iTunes in order to purchase it. It’s great for finding new music and it used to be a good business.

But the record companies are afraid of streaming radio stations. They brought the issue to the Copyright Royalty Board, which decided last year to raise the cost to play a song over the Internet from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2006 to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010. Pandora only makes revenue on ads on its website, so this will be quite a bite into profits.

The Washington Post recently talked with Pandora.

“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”…

“We’re losing money as it is… The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”

The problem is in Washington with the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision. First, if the music industry understood what was in their best interests, they would encourage the promotion of their music. Second, these rules only apply to the US. So I can still listen to streaming radio coming from Canada or anywhere else. Only US-based sites are punished. Third, no fees are charged to traditional over-the-air radio stations to play music.

Rep. Howard L. Berman of California is trying to negotiate a deal between web radio companies and SoundExchange, which represents the record companies. Hopefully he can encourage a more reasonable approach to music over the Internet.