2-inch Cube Could Replace Cell Towers

[Rickster71]

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/monmouth_county_inventor_says.html
Bell Labs develops 2-inch cube that could replace unsightly cell towers.

The LightRadio cubes can be positioned nearly anywhere, from the sides of buildings to light poles, or arranged in grids for more strength. If a certain area has more use during a particular time of the day — say, weekday rush hour on the Garden State Parkway compared to the surrounding suburbs on weekends — the signals can change direction at the touch of a button.

 

[mtrycrafts]

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/monmouth_county_inventor_says.html
Bell Labs develops 2-inch cube that could replace unsightly cell towers.

The LightRadio cubes can be positioned nearly anywhere, from the sides of buildings to light poles, or arranged in grids for more strength. If a certain area has more use during a particular time of the day — say, weekday rush hour on the Garden State Parkway compared to the surrounding suburbs on weekends — the signals can change direction at the touch of a button.

Most interesting. Super

 

[Rickster71]

Most interesting. Super

Since my Verizon cell reception is great everywhere, except when I'm home; I want to get one of them installed on my house.

 

[BMXTRIX]

That's what I'm wondering. I'm thinking that there are a lot of homeowners that wouldn't mind one of these attached to their home somewhere. As long as it isn't line of site, then putting these on homes and businesses seems like it would be well accepted. Likewise the street lights, traffic signals, etc.

It would be awesome to see coverage and speed grow while size drops.

 

[sholling]

Since my Verizon cell reception is great everywhere, except when I'm home; I want to get one of them installed on my house.

I bought a Verizon femtocell but a booster might have been a better choice. A femtocell acts as a miniature cell site and routes your cell phone calls through your home's broadband connection. Older ones like mine only handle the voice side of the communication but I've read that some new models handle 3G. To keep neighbors from stealing your signal they are designed so that you have to get within 10-20 feet to start a call from a femtocell but once you've done that the useful range is about 40 feet. The downside is placement can be a chore because you'll want to run Ethernet and power to a central location and you have to get the GPS antenna to where it can pick up satellites. I paid $100 after a $100 rebate. See if you can talk them out of a free one. The downside is that my femtocell's built in GPS for 911 service is 100 miles off and Verizon will do nothing but blow smoke.

If you want something more generic you can buy a cell phone booster for $200-500 on Amazon. These act as a repeater picking up your cell phone signal from an antenna in the house and communicating with the tower via an antenna on your roof. I'm told that the only downside is placement and that the inside antenna must be closer to the phone than the outside antenna. The potential gotcha is the possibly that Verizon will eventually manage to get the FCC to ban them.

 

[Rickster71]

I bought a Verizon femtocell but a booster might have been a better choice. A femtocell acts as a miniature cell site and routes your cell phone calls through your home's broadband connection. Older ones like mine only handle the voice side of the communication but I've read that some new models handle 3G. To keep neighbors from stealing your signal they are designed so that you have to get within 10-20 feet to start a call from a femtocell but once you've done that the useful range is about 40 feet. The downside is placement can be a chore because you'll want to run Ethernet and power to a central location and you have to get the GPS antenna to where it can pick up satellites. I paid $100 after a $100 rebate. See if you can talk them out of a free one. The downside is that my femtocell's built in GPS for 911 service is 100 miles off and Verizon will do nothing but blow smoke.

If you want something more generic you can buy a cell phone booster for $200-500 on Amazon. These act as a repeater picking up your cell phone signal from an antenna in the house and communicating with the tower via an antenna on your roof. I'm told that the only downside is placement and that the inside antenna must be closer to the phone than the outside antenna. The potential gotcha is the possibly that Verizon will eventually manage to get the FCC to ban them.

Thanks for the info.
I've been looking at boosters, on and off for a year now.
The thing that's holding me back (besides not wanting to spend $200 - $500) is that they put up a new water tower about two miles from my house.
I'm in the process of finding out if and when a carrier is going to put an antenna on it. Didn't want to put out the money and then have them put something up.

 

[Todesengel]

I wonder how they would phase the towers out? Id assume they would take the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' approach and only replace aging/deceased towers with the cubes.

 

[Rickster71]

I wonder how they would phase the towers out? Id assume they would take the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' approach and only replace aging/deceased towers with the cubes.

I doubt if many towers will be phased out; in the same way that Photovoltaics won't phase out power plants and sub-stations.

The LightRadio cubes are supposed to reduce the cost of running and maintaining a cell network by (up to) 50%.
Hope we see that in cheaper phone & data plans.

 

[sholling]

The LightRadio cubes are supposed to reduce the cost of running and maintaining a cell network by (up to) 50%.
Hope we see that in cheaper phone & data plans.

When cell phones are delivered by unicorn.

 

[Rickster71]

When cell phones are delivered by unicorn.

I hope in the future they put a plastic or rubber safety cap on the unicorn.
Just for when he's making deliveries.