The new house is in an area with very poor cell service. It’s been that way for as long as anyone can remember and shows no sign of improving any time soon.

I have installed cable internet service and it works very well. Is there a gadget I can install to grab cell calls and send them over WiFi? If you’ve tried one, how well does it work?

I don’t know about using wifi to boost the cell signal, but have you tried to find something to just boost the cell signal? Who is your cell carrier?

Bad cell service here also. Took a while to figure things out, but I now have WiFi Calling working reliably.

WiFi Calling is a feature available on pretty much all phones these days. It basically means you are making your calls over the internet rather than on the mobile network.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-use-wifi-calling/

The biggest problem I had was that for some reason, the phone was bopping between WiFi Calling and the mobile network. It was like it would detect a decent mobile signal and switch to that network. Then when the mobile connection was bad, it would switch back to wifi. Problem was that the transitions were anything but smooth. Conversations would break up or drop completely.

Some phones have a setting that forces the use of WiFi even if a mobile signal is available. My previous phone didn't have that (neither does the one that replaced it). I was getting pretty frustrated with trying to use my phone at home. What I ended up with is a kluge and I had to buy a new phone (not a big prob because I buy cheap phones). But it works.

WiFi Calling is set to "on" (you do that just once).

When I'm home, I turn on Airplane Mode, which kills my connection to the mobile network (and also wifi and Bluetooth). I turn the wifi back on and it automatically connects to my home internet. Presto, everything works great.

The pain is that I have to to turn Airplane Mode off when I leave the house and remember to turn it back on when I get back home.

And the voicemail app that's on my phone doesn't automatically signal me that I have a voicemail if I'm on WiFi Calling; it needs a mobile connection. I have to *86 to check my voicemails. I just check voicemail manually to if I see a recent call that I didn't pick up to see if they left a message. Or it pops up when I connect to a mobile signal away from home.

I did have to get a new phone to implement the Airplane Mode hack. My previous phone wouldn't let me turn wifi back on after I turned on Airplane Mode. It was an "all or nothing" proposition. I got another phone, and now I can turn off the mobile connection (Airplane Mode) but turn the wifi back on.

It would have been easier if I could have found a phone had the feature that lets you force, and keep, a wifi connection rather than the troublesome bouncing back and forth.

This is the distillation of months of problems and investigation. It was a little tricky because not all features that I found online are available on all phones. Apparently various carriers tweak Android (what I have) and mess with the features. I won't bore you with the saga of trying to find and try a phone before buying to see what features were or weren't available...

If you have an iPhone, it may be more straightforward, but I think I recall seeing people having to do some fancy dancing to get things working on those also.

We have cell service through Xfinity, which is an MVNO of Verizon. I think if you're a direct client of a provider, rather than once removed as I am, I think some of them will give you a signal booster for your home. I looked into buying one, but they weren't cheap. I buy cheap phones and it was more cost effective to go the route I did.

At one home we had ATT with poor coverage to our neighborhood. They had a "microcell" which plugged into our modem and created solid cellular service. This may have been before wifi calling was common, so I'm not sure that option is available...

Microcell - that’s what I was thinking of. Looks like they still make them but only for AT&T - fine for me, maybe not for some of our guests. Used ones are available on eBay for about $20 so worth a try.

I’ll play with WiFi calling and put instructions in the welcome book as well.

Thanks!

Best signal boosters:

https://www.lifewire.com/best-...nal-boosters-4154516

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/be...hone-signal-boosters

Didn't realize this is for one of your rentals.

quote:

Didn't realize this is for one of your rentals.

Same, I thought you were talking about your own home. I only have experience with ATT but, yeah, you're gonna need something that works across carriers.

Let us know what you come up with!

We have rented a number of places with poor cell service. As long as the wifi is strong, that hasn't been a problem.

Internationally, our daughter just turns off cell service and just uses wifi when available.

“Microcell” type products are specific to a carrier. If you want something that works with many carriers, Wi-Fi calling is the better bet. Good luck!