Comment by macNchz
5 hours ago
Those do exist, they’re called cell signal boosters. Once upon a time, I believe, some American cell providers would give you one for free if you had bad signal at home, which mattered a lot more before phones all had wifi calling.
> Those do exist, they’re called cell signal boosters.
No, those are different. They are describing a femtocell. I still have one site with a T-Mobile one. It basically VPN’s to T-Mobile’s network core through the cable ISP, uses GPS to check its location for licensed spectrum, and then broadcasts its own LTE signal. It does not boost/repeat the signal of a nearby tower, it runs its own.
Do they work for 5G? I think just amplifying the signal (like 2g signal boosters did) would mess with a lot with all the fancy RF tricks that make 5G fast, stable, low-latency and quite low on package loss (5G has impressively low package loss on the IP layer).
For most use cases WiFi should be the better solution. VoWiFi works well for calls. Should be enough for home and office use.
FWIW, MMS and SMS are still left in the dust in this situation, as I have this exact issue.
That shouldn't be the case. There's an extension to VoWiFi to support SMS over IP. With 2G and 3G going away it's not like your carrier has a choice anyway.