Question from Deneen L.: My husband and I recently moved into a new home that’s located in a very hilly area.
We both have iPhones but the Sprint/TMobile signal inside the house is very weak.
We sprung for Xfinity Internet when we moved in, but we’d rather not have to install a landline phone if we can help it.
Is there any way we can boost the weak cellular signal to a usable level?
Rick’s answer: Believe it or not Deneen, this is actually a very common problem for people who live in remote locations. But as luck would have it, you have a couple of options to choose from thanks to your Xfinity Internet connection:
1 – You could contact Sprint/TMobile and ask them to send you a Femtocell.
In a nutshell, a Femtocell is a device that plugs into your router and allows you to use your Sprint phone over your broadband Internet connection. It effectively gives your home it’s very own personal cell tower.
There’s typically an up-front charge for the Femtocell device itself, plus a small monthly fee for the service. But most carriers will waive both charges in situations where there is no usable signal available in the home. Read this post for more information about that.
2 – I know you said you don’t want to have to pay to have a land-line installed, but depending on your current service plan with Xfinity you might be able to actually cut your total Xfinity bill by signing up for a package deal such as Xfinity Triple Play.
3 – If your two iPhones will be the only cell phones that will ever be used in your home, you won’t have to buy or install a thing. All you have to do is enable Wi-Fi Calling on your phones in order to send and receive both voice calls and text messages.
This is your best option in my opinion, because it won’t cost you a penny and you can enable it on your phones in mere seconds.
After you enable Wi-Fi Calling your phones will automatically use your Wi-Fi network to place and receive your calls instead of a cell tower.
From the user’s perspective, Wi-Fi calling is more or less the same as placing calls over a cell tower. You shouldn’t even notice a difference.
Sprint has put together a nice Wi-FI Calling FAQs page that explains how Wi-Fi Calling works if you’re interested in learning more about it.
Want to give Wi-Fi calling a try? Just follow the steps below:
1 – Open the Settings apps on your iPhones.
2 – Tap Phone, then tap Wi-Fi Calling and follow the prompts as they appear.
That’s all there is to it. Either of the three options I mentioned above will solve your poor signal issue, but Wi-Fi calling is very simple to implement, it’s absolutely free, and you already have it built in to your phones!
I hope this helps, Deneen. Good luck!
Update from Deneen: Thanks for the info Rick. My husband and I both enabled Wi-Fi Calling on our phones and now we can send and receive calls just fine!
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