I live in the village of Charlotte and like many others I had to get a network extender for Verizon.... Well now we have a summer home in an area that only gets service from AT&T towers. So I checked out Cricket Wireless... The phone works but only have one bar, so I get an occasional dropped call or even no service. We are determined to stick with Cricket because of their no contract and their low prices. I am checking out network extenders etc to find a solution. With Cricket as a start up company that leases AT&T towers not sure I can talk them into a free unit. I did find out how to do a home test and this is what I did to find out my true DB strength.
Field Test Signal strength It works on most iPhones...Android has another way to check the DB gain.
1. Access the iPhone’s Field Test mode by typing *3001#12345#* in the phone’s keypad and press dial. This will bring up the Field Test menu.
2. In the top left corner, you will see the numerical signal strength value, as in the picture below.If you tap the number in the top left corner, it will toggle between displaying signal in decibels, and displaying it in “dots”.
To exit Field Test Mode and go back to your phone as normal, just press the Home button.
If you want to exit Field Test Mode, but keep the signal display in decibels, not dots, that’s easy. It’s particularly convenient if you are in the middle of a site survey and you want to move around from room to room to find the strongest signal. While in Field Test Mode, hold down the Power button until the “Slide to Power Off” message appears, then release the Power button and hold the Home button until Field Test quits. You can now tap the signal dots or signal numbers to switch between the two. To exit this entirely and go back to normal, go back into Field Test Mode, then quit it normally by pressing the Home button.
As a general rule, -80dB or higher (ie, -70, -60, -50) is considered strong signal. -110dB or lower (ie, -120, -130) is very weak.
My signal in the village of Charlotte is 111-118 basically a weak signal
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