Installed my cell phone signal booster
My only reluctance in purchasing the iPhone was the relatively poor coverage that ATT has in my home and near where I work. I love having an iPhone, but hate that in my kitchen and most anywhere else on the first floor of my house I get really bad coverage. So I decided to try a cell phone signal booster. After looking around on the Internet, I settled on the zBoost YX510-PCS-CEL. It seemed to get mostly decent reviews, and promised to work for both the iPhone and my wife's Verizon phone.
I was hoping to avoid having to install the external antenna on the roof, and after crawling around in my attic with my iPhone set in field service mode, I was able to figure out that on one wall of the attic I got excellent (5 bars) coverage. I put the external antenna on that wall, and ran the cable through the ceiling of my linen closet (along with the power connector). Can't say it is the prettiest or most professional installation, but it is invisible from inside the house.
Once installed, I did see why some of the reviewers complained. Right next to the booster, I get five bars (instead of 2). This drops off pretty quickly; I only get ~2 bars downstairs. However, the call quality (as measured by talking to my wife when I called her on the land line phone) is distinctly improved (verified by unplugging the extender and repeating the same experiment).
Interestingly, the field test mode doesn't report that much of a boost (hovers around ~91 db for the best two towers without the booster, and ~70 db with the booster). Apparently, that is enough to make a quality difference on the call.