Cell Phone (4G) Coverage in our area: the technology and the debate

4G has the promise of providing our communities with broadband cellphone, TV, and internet coverage at a fraction of the cost of a wired system.  As we all know, the cellphone signals in our area vary from property to property, and even from room to room in a house.  One house can have 4 bars and the next no bars; maybe 1 bar of 3G.  The technology is better than that, but it depends on the desire of the carriers OR the POAs to pursue a long-term solution.  The long term solution would have to consider the "blind" areas of our community.

Most of us have "access" to at least a half dozen 4G towers from the wireless company most of us use.  But, we are "too high";  The 4G transmitters are not pointed "up."   If we had a more powerful 4G antenna from the flagpole transmitter at the top of the mountain, then that would resolve the problem for some, and it could serve all three of our communities in this region.  The problem the wireless company is addressing now is the weight of a 4G transmitter, pre-amp, and amplifier:  the flagpole would have to be strengthened.  

Even with that, over our three communities, there would still be a significant number of homes and areas where the signal would be inadequate.

To a communication technician, there are three options.  We can eliminate one immediately because the our community experience with it has been fairly uniformly unsatisfactory:  an in-home booster that relies on an internet signal (DSL).

Two are viable:

1. An external individual home antenna specially engineered to pull in a particular target tower
2. A "booster" substation that would take the signal from an existing tower, such as the flagpole, and redirect it to blind areas.

The following URL shows an example of a home system... For us, it might be way overkill, because we don't need a mast, just the receiver itself.  http://www.ciena.com/connect/blog/How-I-built-my-own-mobile-cell-tower.html.

I'm working on the second one.

For your information, Wilson Electronics is a good reference site.