Mobile phone signal booster for campervan

helzie2015 · ‎11-02-2022

Hi

I'd like to improve the signal I get on my iPhone when we are away in our campervan. I'm wondering if a mobile phone signal booster would work, since Ofcom now allow these. These units use an external aerial, an amplifier and an internal aerial to improve the cellular signal.

(1) Does anyone have any experience of using one of these in a vehicle (car, campervan, motorhome...)?

(2) It looks as if I would need a mobile phone signal booster which boosted 800MHz signals (as I think some rural masts only broadcast at that frequency) and 2100MHz and/or 2600MHz for everywhere else. Is that correct?

Thanks.

EssexBoyEE · ‎11-02-2022

I've installed a few of these moons ago and they can be very difficult to install and get to work correctly and I would suggest for a Caravan it's probably a non starter, your not going to get the signal isolation that is required between the External and Internal Antennas as they effectively work by rebroadcasting the same frequency.

helzie2015 · ‎11-02-2022

The ones I've been looking at are specific for vehicles. They are supposed to work even with a car, where it's recommended to install the magnetic external aerial towards the rear of the roof, so in theory it should work with a longer campervan.

EssexBoyEE · ‎11-02-2022

Well I can only give you my humble opinion having installed and tested few, yes they can work under the right conditions but as said can be challenging to set up, but fell free to try them.

The cheaper ones, well are just cheap, the more expensive ones can work well with GSM (2G) and 3G as they are the older Single Band technology, with LTE (4G and above) these Repeaters don't fair to well too well due to how LTE technology works with multi Band Carrier Aggregation and Multi MiMo Signals. also bear in mind that both the 2G and 3G Networks are about to be switched off in the near future.

What exactly is the main use of the Phone? Voice Calls or Data use, (WhatsApp, Social media etc), if it's the later, you may want to consider a decent LTE Router with some External Aerial arrangement as this will work better and give you some future proofing for when 2G and 3G gets switched off.

helzie2015 · ‎11-02-2022

That's some useful additional information, thanks.

My husband and I both have pay-monthly SIM-only plans, one with unlimited data. We hardly make any phone calls but we do both use mobile data to get email, browse the web, stream movies, use WhatsApp, do online shopping, use satnav etc. etc. We go online both on our iPhones but we also tether our laptops to our phones. So, yes, we need access to 4G signals.

We tour a lot in Scotland and we have found that there are quite a few rural areas where a pay-monthly EE plan can pick up a signal but where a MVNO plan will have no signal — I presume these are areas where the masts broadcast on the extended-range 800MHz frequency.

I did look at motorhome wifi systems (rooftop antenna plus router) — for example the Maxview Roam — but these seem to require an additional SIM card. That's what put me off as it seems like an ongoing expense when we already pay a hefty monthly fee for unlimited data on the phones. Also, I was somewhat confused about what kinds of EE SIM cards I could use.

The mobile phone signal booster for vehicles seemed to get round the need for an additional SIM and for about the same initial cost. However, there's no point in getting a mobile phone signal booster if it won't work well!

Thanks.

bristolian · ‎12-02-2022

@helzie2015 wrote:

We tour a lot in Scotland and we have found that there are quite a few rural areas where a pay-monthly EE plan can pick up a signal but where a MVNO plan will have no signal — I presume these are areas where the masts broadcast on the extended-range 800MHz frequency.

That's the most likely reason.

EE's base-3G layer is B3-1800Mhz, with B1-2100Mhz & B7-2600Mhz used as capacity layers.

The B20-800Mhz layer is used as a coverage-boost, in many areas it overlaps with existing layers but in some remote areas it can be the only service available.

A previous post has commented that the 2G & 3G networks are due to be switched off in the near future - that's partially correct, for the 3G-network only. There will be 2G-service on EE for several years yet.