My wifes cell phone doesn't get a very good signal at our house.She has a Motorola T720 cell phone hooked up to Verizon.I've seen these little booster things that hook up to your battery and I've seen little things that attach to the antenna that are all supposed to enable you to talk to the mother ship back in the home galaxy.Are all these things just rip off vodoo stuff?Thanks

Ripoff vodoo stuff. If it really only cost $.99 retail to boost your cellphone reception, don't you think the manufacturer would include it in the phone and advertise how much better the reception was than their old model?

If a different phone through Verizon gets similar reception then it sounds like your close to a dead spot. If other Verizon phones get better reception then you need another phone.

When we were hiking in the mountains behind Anchorage, we had a cellphone to call my friends' mom when it was time to pick us up.  We got to the end of the trail, but the phone was just out of cell phone range.

My smart dad was with us.  He used the foil we wrapped our sandwichs in to make a dish-shaped paraboilic antenna that he held behind the phone's antenna, and pointed towards the city.  We tried again, and we were able to make the call.  Cool, huh?

modify the plan, not the phone

True, but lots of people are locked into their plans or don't want to switch for other reasons. We had a big discussion about this very topic last Friday at work.

As a side note, it seemed to be the consensus that nobody that uses or previously used Cingular service was very happy with it. The majority of people had switched to Sprint.

Sprint sucks too!!!

Personally, I think they all suck. Sprint service has been ok, but their customer service is terrible. From what I've used though, at least in my area and I'm sure it varies across the nation, Sprint is the lesser of 10 evils.

Guys, I had Sprint and I checked out Cingular when I was ready to switch.

(You gotta check them out thoroughly because it doesn't make sense to switch very often -- even though Sprint sucked, I put up with them for years because of pricing, I owned the phone, etc.)

Sprint had TERRIBLE customer service.  I turned dow a free phone with no contract that they offered me as I was leaving (already had no contract).

Cingular sounded good at first glance, but then  I found out that their plans offer very little in basic service and beyond that, everything is extra.

Back to the topic.  You should have an FCC notice under your battery or in the owners manual, saying what frequency your phone operates at (roughly).

From that, you can figure the wavelength, baased on the speed of light.

Generally, an antenna for any radio device should be a fraction or a multiple of the wavelength.  There are other tricks we won't go into here, like the coils you see at the antenna bottom on car installations, etc.

Theoretically, you should be able to attch a straight piece of copper wire of the proper length, to the antenna or with a plug in the antenna jack, if it has one.

Your wife may not like this non- martha Stewart approach, but it could do the job.

Call verizon and complain about coverage in your area. Could be problems with a local tower, or just a lack of a good tower in your area.

The T720 has pretty good RF performance, so its probably a coverage (tower) issue.

AFAIK, switching your plan probably wont work, because I understood that each company dosnt own their own towers, instead, several providers lease usage on the same tower, so if you switched plans, chances are you will still have the same problems.

Get rid of the Motorola phone.
My wife's .99 Nokia workes a heck
of a lot better than the dept issued
POS Motorola phone I carry.

Not a Motorola cell phone fan.
Fact is, I like GE police radios better too