At one point in time or another everyone who has ever owned a cellular phone has experienced trouble with their reception. This can lead to the inability to hear and or transmit voice or even problems using mobile data services. Such problems, inevitable as they are, often lead consumers to investigate products such as cellular phone signal boosters and ask questions about how cellular phone signal boosters are supposed to work, or whether or not they work at all.

In order to properly and honestly evaluate the efficacy of cellular phone signal boosters, one needs to examine how cellular phone signals are transmitted and received. The basics are quite simple: a number of towers spanning major populated areas and freeways pick up and transmit data via special cellular frequencies. These frequencies are not necessarily limited to line of sight, as it is possible to transmit cellular phone data to objects out of site. Simply walk into a closet and close the door and one can probably still use their cellular phone, though perhaps not as effectively as before.

The reason for the potential decline in efficiency is that cellular transmission technologies can be impaired by physical obstacles. This is why going into tunnels lined with thick concrete and generous use of steel and other metals generally results in a degraded or completely lost signal. The actual signal may or may not be present depending on conditions such as the type of obstructions between a given cellular phone and other local towers and distance between the cellular phone and a nearby cellular phone tower. The reason distance is important is because the power and efficiency of an incoming signal degrades the further away from a tower one is, and the further away a tower is, the less likely 100% of the outgoing data from the cellular phone is to reach that tower.

Cellular phone signal boosters generally consist of two or more antennas. One (or more) antenna is designated to pickup data to and from local cell phones while the other antenna or antennae are assigned the task of sending out a far more powerful signal to nearby cellular phone towers. This means that if there is a signal, even a weak signal, chances are that cellular phone signal boosters can bridge the connection gap by acting as a micro-tower or relay of sorts.

It would seem a fair question to ask why, if cellular phone signal boosters do work, can the same technology not be incorporated into cellular phones. The answer is that cellular phones do have the same technology, but a less powerful variant. Cellular phone signal boosters tend to operate on power from an outlet or automobile power point, both of which supply far more power than any modern cellular phone battery can without wearing down in a matter of seconds or minutes.