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A Detailed Look at Wilson Electronics 4G LTE (801865) Amplifier and Compatible Antennas (304411 and 301111).

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
The Wilson Electronics 801865 Mounted behind our plasma television. Here you can see where I opted to mount the Wilson Electronics 4G LTE amplifier. I chose to mount it behind our television so it could be hidden and have access to an outlet without required a bunch of cable to accomplish it.

Shortly after purchasing my Droid Bionic 4G LTE smart phone I was blown away by the results of my data transfer rates on bandwidthplace.com. Depending on my location I was getting speeds between 3Mbps to 32Mbps and no, I’m not joking. This along with the mobile hotspot capabilities of the Droid Bionic is what peaked my interest in finding a way to get a Verizon 4G LTE signal at home which has been a problem since we switched from At&t to big red a couple of years ago.

Our neighborhood apparently is in a Verizon black hole where the force is so strong that no reception can penetrate through. Well, that’s not entirely true, we get a signal but it’s random and jumps from network to network (1x, 3g, 4G LTE occasionally on one side of the house) every few seconds. Bear in mind that the signal we received was never enough to make a call or transfer data. Up until I decided to ditch my home internet and setup a home network using my Bionic we had been using a Verizon (Samsung branded) network extender which worked great for phone calls but required a high speed internet connection and did not function well with data functions like text messages.

Okay, enough with the back story lets get to the meat of what this article is about; Wilson Electronics (WE) 4G LTE signal Booster and the accompanying WE antennas. Considering that I am a rather cheap individual I was not willing to pay retail for a WE all in one kit ($700+) so I decided to piece the system together using several sources which I’ll detail below.

The Review:

2011-11-16_11-32-16_609

The question on your mind is likely, Does it work? YES! Let me start by saying that I went from sporadic signals that lasted no more than 5 seconds to a consistent 4G LTE signal that floats between -82 and -95 depending on the tower I’m receiving the signal from. This provides roughly 4Mbs to 12 Mbs download speeds and upload speeds between 1 ½ Mbs to 5 Mbs. However, your situation may vary for a number of reasons. Careful research and thought must be conducted prior to making the investment. To give the primary and very general requirement for success with WE signal booster here’s what the technical support staff at WE told me, if you can attain a signal from the carrier then this system will work for you. Meaning, if you can lock onto a signal from the carrier even for a brief moment or two this system will likely help you attain a solid and consistent signal. I’m not saying you’ll be sitting with a -65db signal but if you’re situation is similar to mine you could see signals ranging from -82db to -94db depending on several factors; like distance to the tower, broadcast power of the tower, etc…

Negatives:

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