Use outside antenna with ATT Homebase

I also have a ATT Homebase ZTE 2700A and am in a similar situation with occasional reception issues.  I wanted to ask if you had any success with an external antenna as the connections in the battery compartment do appear to be antenna connections.  Can anyone share their experiance?  What antnenna(s) and antenna connection adpaters were used?

There is a pretty detailed discussion going on over in this forum:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31385863-ZTE-MF271a-AT-T-Z700A-Antenna-connections-found-inside

Sound like the connectors may be in two different areas and MAY be ms-156's.  Stay tuned.

I found that a cell signal booster/repeater for 850/1900MHz works - no need to connect it directly to the Homebase.  The Homebase will "pick-up" the boosted signal.  My booster has a yagi directional antenna mounted on the roof, on the same pole as my TV antenna, the booster then takes the signal from the external antenna makes it stronger and distributes it in the house with a smaller antenna.  We did it first for our cell phones and found that it worked with the Homebase unit.  We went from about 1 bar to 3-4 bars.  We are now able to stream movies, skype, etc.

That sounds like what I need. Do you have the model number of the antenna and or booster inside the house? Thanks

The booster was a zBoost ZB545 SOHO Dual Band Cell Phone Booster, I replaced the original antenna that came with the booster with a XHTech 11dBi 824-960MHz GSM CDMA Yagi antenna. Both are about three years old and with the HomeBase unit my needs have changed. The Yagi antenna made a huge difference in the performance of the booster but I plan to upgrade it to one that handles a broader range up to 2100MHz.  I also plan to upgrade the booster next year to probably the SolidRF BuildingForce 4G-M booster.  The current setup works fine but I think I can improve the performance, including the signal distribution in the house.  Hope that helps.

Yes it helps thank you. But one more question. Does it matter if a booster says it's for 3G and not 4G? 

I can't answer that, the one I have says it for 3g but it works for 4g and I do a lot of streaming of Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV and it works well. I believe Homebase is LTE (4G?).  You are more 'future proof' going with 4G. 

Googling I found this:   "3G signal boosters generally handle talk, text, and  basic 3G internet. 4G signal boosters do all of 3G and also high-speed LTE data. That's faster internet, video & audio streaming, emails, and other real-time intensive data.  

I found comments that it makes no difference and that may be true now but the technology is moving fast and in a few years you may find that the 3G is getting phased out.  Best of luck.

Hello, have to jump in here. I have a home base at a lake house in the country. It works fine but very low signal.  I just discovered that the home base was discontinued and replaced with a similar device that has external antenna connection and offers 5ghz Wi-Fi and more channels to receive LTE.  I'm going to call and try to upgrade my device, it might be cheaper than buying a booster. 

Ericdallas,

Interesting.  I was just at the AT&T store trying to figure out why my homebase internet speed dropped from about 15 mbps to 3mbps (and less, often less than 1 mbps).  After going through much rigamarole, they told me everything is fine on their end and there's nothing they can do to help me, despite my now paying almost $200 for less-than-dial-up speeds. 

At no point did anyone tell me about this new device.  Do you have any more details?  We, too, live in the country and AT&T is literally our only choice (well, HughesNet but let's not even have *that* discussion).

I actually just ordered the above antenna gear today, thinking it was my final option.

Details?

Thanks,

Mary