How to Choose the Right Commercial GSM Signal Booster

Are you constantly facing problems with the quality of your GSM signal? Is your business losing customer loyalty because of this? Or, perhaps, is it difficult for in-office employees to contact each other via mobile communications? In all these cases, a licensed GSM booster will be a way out, providing a stable GSM signal quality in the network area you need.

Would you like to purchase a certified GSM booster to legally improve the quality of indoor mobile communication? Just contact us!

What Is a GSM Signal Booster?

A GSM signal booster is a radio device used to improve the quality of a mobile signal in blind areas caused either by a large distance from the cell tower or by many ultra-dense physical overlaps (for example, concrete walls and floors).

These boosters are useful when you, your customers, or your employees are having trouble communicating via mobile networks without the signal being interrupted.

Although almost every UK resident has a personal mobile device for calls, there are still dead zones where the signal is either very poor or non-existent. Often, this is not the fault of the mobile provider, and the only problem is that the radio signal is not able to overcome some physical barriers without losing quality. In such cases, you need to use certified GSM voice boosters.

What Does a GSM Booster Kit Consist Of?

Before you find out how to choose a commercial GSM booster, note that not every device of this type can be considered legal (that is, suitable for individual use) in the UK. Below, we will discuss the design of an Ofcom-compliant indoor GSM booster kit.

Donor antenna

This is an outdoor antenna that receives the signal where it exists and transmits it to an indoor antenna placed inside the building.

Internal antenna

This antenna, as can be guessed from the name, is located inside the building and serves to receive the GSM signal from the outside, where there is stable coverage.

Internal amplifier

This component of the kit transmits a signal from the external (donor) antenna to the internal one. Thanks to this, mobile phones of users who are inside the building receive the same quality of the GSM indoor signal as if they were outside.

5 Steps to Select the Right GSM Signal Booster

And now let's figure out how to select a GSM booster for commercial needs.

Pay attention to the downlink and uplink power of devices you will use

Pay attention to the device’s power in the downlink (which receives the signal from the base station) and uplink (which transmits the signal from the user device). This data will be useful when choosing a booster (namely, its power parameters).

Check the decibel gain

When selecting a GSM signal booster in the UK, you need to know the gain in decibels (dB) to understand what its maximum power should be. If the unit is decibel milliwatts (dBm), a negative number of -70dBm is better than -80dBm, as the former will give you a more efficient device in terms of signal reception.

Measure the coverage area that you have to improve

You have to analyse the entire area where the installation of the booster is needed – perhaps the bad signal is not the case for the whole building, but only for certain zones. You also need to measure the entire area with blind zones to transfer this data to specialists in building GSM signal optimisation solutions.

Count the average number of users

Try to guess how many mobile users, on average, will be in the building where a signal booster is needed. The power of the boosters that will be included in the GSM signal optimisation system depends on this.

Choose only among certified boosters

And finally, to ensure your solution is efficient, stable, and doesn’t expose you to problems with local legislatures, select only Ofcom-compliant GSM signal boosters.

How Can We Help?

The UCtel company provides Ofcom-compliant indoor solutions for improving the quality of the GSM signal. We are highly specialised in GSM coverage planning, installation of signal boosters, and their technical support. Thus, you will get a legal solution to normalise the GSM coverage in the shortest possible time and at the lowest price.

Let's look at a special case of solving the problem of dead zones in the GSM coverage in the UK.

We were contacted by the NHS trust, who needed to optimise the quality of the mobile network signal in two of their hospitals. The challenge of this request was in its urgency, because of the sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

As for the rest of the requirements, patients and hospital staff needed to be provided with a stable GSM signal so that they could access digital patient records on tablets and mobile phones, schedule appointments/visits, and communicate remotely with each other and with patients' relatives.

After analysing the building to determine the number and location of devices to provide the required coverage, our team selected Ofcom-compliant Cel-Fi QUATRA signal boosters as the solution. Having determined the optimal locations, our team proceeded to install the system.

As a result, after a few days, all visitors and staff in the hospital buildings received reliable and stable mobile coverage.

You can learn more about this case study in our portfolio.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, the problem of selecting a commercial GSM booster is easily solved with the UCtel certified signal boosters. And you can always get help with the system planning and device installation.

If you are not sure how to choose a GSM booster for commercial use, or if you are experiencing poor GSM signal and looking for experts to improve mobile voice calls, just ask us! Fill out our contact form, and we will contact you as soon as possible.