Mobile Phone Repeaters
If you have experienced poor mobile phone reception in regional Australia, and you want to improve it, this page is aimed to help.
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Improving Your Mobile Phone and Internet Reception in Regional Australia
Summary: This article applies to any vehicle or building in a regional area with weak mobile phone signals.
My personal experience is with a 'blue tick' phone that receives a weak ground-level outdoor signal of about -120 dBm (RSRP) on the Telstra wholesale network
(luckily across several towers and frequency bands). Installation of a basic repeater system (CEL-FI R41 with roof-top LPDA 'donor' and indoor dome 'server' antenna)
increased my indoor signal strength to about -90dBm, and indoor download data speed increased from zero to >10 Mb/s. The instructions with the system and on-line from
suppliers are clear, so it was a DIY job in which the biggest challenges were setting the donor antenna, choosing a location with power for the repeater unit, and running
the cables. No harder overall than installing an outdoor TV antenna. If desired, the same repeater unit can be moved to a vehicle, with different antennas, for use on the move.
There are a few tricks to get the best data speeds at home, as explained in the article.
Reference & Link: Birch RG (2025) Improving Your Mobile Phone and Internet Reception in Regional Australia
https://scithings.id.au/Regional_Phone.pdf Using CellTracker Summary: CellTracker (by BPK Horn at MIT) is an Android app that you can use to help locate mobile phone transceivers (cell towers, eNBs).
It is provided free and ad-free by the developer, but it can be a little cryptic to use. Here are some instructions with an emphasis on 4G and DSS 5G networks, based on instructions from the developer.
What any phone model reports to any such app seems unpredictable, but all you really need from CellTracker is ECI. This comes from TelephonyManager
in your phone, but typically is not revealed without using an app. TA is a bonus, not provided by all phones. Other data of interest are easily displayed in the phone itself (using SIM Status or Service Mode).
From ECI you can derive eNB and (local) CELLID of the transmitter. Most likely, a search of CellMapper or a similar crowdsourced database will reveal the location of the eNB.
That site can then be examined in the ACMA web-map for further details (for anyone so deeply interested).
Reference & Link: Birch RG (2025) CellTracker Instructions.
https://scithings.id.au/CellTracker.pdf