I'll look at these at next week's Consumer Electronics trade show,
and consult with my old colleagues. As I recall, this Wilson piece is
an in-vehicle (that is a car) unit and is designed to cover an area
that size. The description appears to confirm that. We had no luck
adapting these vehicle units to bigger spaces. By limiting the
coverage area, they mitigate the problem of cross-talk between the
external and internal antennas (further helped by the use of the
car's metal roof acting as a ground plane and shield).

The general problem with the wireless cellular systems on FRP boats
is the lack of shielding (or ability to get enough vertical and
overall separation)twixt the two antennas. This cross talk renders
the system either completely useless (and sometimes damaged) or just
too weak to be worth it. A highly directional, properly positioned
interior antenna can help offset this in smaller boats. Right-sizing
the system to the space you will be covering is important.
On most boats, especially with the advent of any number of Bluetooth
handsfree options, I just don't see a big payoff, unless you will
have numerous cell devices active at once. And even then, it doesn't
work on the flying bridge or most exterior spaces.

Properly configured cellular wireless booster systems do co-exist
fine with wi-fi systems. At CES, one of the things I'll be looking
for is something like the Lynksys that has USB capability. We played
around with some units this past spring from a few companies, with
inconsistent results.

Just to reiterate, my old company has sold/deployed thousands of
these cellular systems, wired and wireless, into a very wide variety
of environments. We had real engineers using real test equipment
assisting really picky customers including government entities, law
enforcement, oilfield (offshore and land) service companies, etc. So
any comments I have on the subject aren't just based on "I tried one
of them once in my marina and it didn't seem so good". Which of
course may well end up being the case in any one individuals
circumstance.

George

On Jan 3, 2008, at 6:26 AM, Dave Clark wrote:

Thanks George, I understand a bit better now some of the problems. I'll wait
a couple of weeks to see if you come up with anything. Otherwise I'll
probably just get a hard wired amp and keep changing the adapter cables from
aircard to phone.
Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Hechtman" ghechtman@aol.com
To: "Dave Clark" av8tor@theriver.com
Cc: trawlers-and-trawlering@lists.samurai.com
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 10:29 AM
Subject: Re: AT&T: Cell Phone Amplifiers

They use completely different frequencies so there is no problem at all with
combining WiFi and cellular radios.  Many mobile phones today have both WiFi
and cellular connectivity.  The Apple iPhone and AT&T Tilt are good
examples.

This is a very good point.  For voice phone use, Bluetooth gives 20-30ft of
range.  This means you can attach your mobile phone to an amp/antenna and
use a Bluetooth headset (a tiny ear transmitter/receiver) to walk around on
the boat and talk without a problem.  Using Bluetooth in this way works very
well.

For digital access, the very latest WiFi-enabled phones allow you to turn
the phone itself into a small WiFi hotspot on your boat.  This means that
you have the phone connected to the amp/antenna broadcasting the 3G high
speed internet connection over the internal WiFi radio.  No other boxes,
power wiring or other mess is needed.  You connect your laptop wirelessly to
your own phone with WiFi.  The AT&T Tilt does this today.

It's a confusing time in the mobile wireless world because much is changing.
Type "Android" into Google and you'll get pages of links to a new mobile
phone technology that wasn't known about until two months ago.  Very little
information, architecture, and help is available for the boating
implications of all of these things.

Stay tuned!

---=
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53PH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine

www.activecaptain.com
Content, Communications, Community

.

From: "Jeffrey Siegel" jeff@activecaptain.com

<snip>>

I'm unable to fully comprehend all this so maybe I'll try in the AM :-) All
I really know for sure is that if I had been transported from even ten years
ago the commonplace stuff would be absolutely amazing.

Dave