One of the simplest and most helpful things you can do to improve cell reception is to find the location of your cell tower. When you know where the cell tower is located, you know which direction your signal is coming from. Knowing the origin of your cell signal can help you understand why you have poor reception, and how you may be able to improve it. Normally that will be your carrier’s cell tower closest to your location. So how do you find it? Go to our page Cell Towers. You can enter your location by street address and the search engine will return a list of all towers within a 3 mile radius. The site also plots all the towers on Google Maps. For those towers that were registered with a street address, it will display the address. 

Change Your Location

If you’re at home, try moving to different rooms of your house or apartment to see if you get better reception in any of them. If you’re in the workplace, move to the other side of the office or into the hallway. Cellular signal tends to fluctuate inside buildings, so by trying different locations you can often find a place that provides better reception. 

Find a Window Your Location

Building materials tend to obstruct cellular signals, and glass may allow signal to pass through more readily than, say, concrete walls or a metal roof. For better reception, go stand near a window to try your call. If you see little or no improvement at first, move to another window. If you know the location of your cell carrier’s nearest tower, find a window on the side of the building facing the tower. 

Get Higher

Cell phone signal works on a line-of-site basis. Any obstructions between you and the tower can block and weaken the signal you receive. By increasing your elevation you reduce the chance of obstructions degrading your reception. So go up to the top floor of your home or office building. Or if driving, find a high spot and park there to try your call. 

Go Outside

Sometimes you just have to give up the battle and go outside to make or receive a call. As noted above, anything between you and the tower can degrade your reception. Exiting the building may mean taking the elevator down 14 floors, or maybe you’ll have to park your car and step out. Not very convenient perhaps, but if you need to make a call this will immediately reduce potential obstructions. Unfortunately, inclement weather and traffic jams can sometimes make this suggestion really inconvenient.

Ask yourself these questions:

1) When I am inside, do I have problems with dropped calls or lost connections, poor call audio quality, or texts, emails and voicemails that show up in my in-box hours after they were sent?

2) When I go outside, do the problems identified above seem to go away? Is it easier to keep connections or complete calls? Does the audio quality of my calls improve? Can I download files to my phone faster than when I’m indoors?

If you answer ‘yes’ to these questions, a cell signal booster can probably bring better signal coverage into your home, office or other building.

If 'No" consider using Wi-Fi calling or get a femtocell from your wireless carrier which routes the cellular call through your broadband connection.  

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