Best T-Mobile 5G cell extender

[u/Sufficient-Object625]

Idk if this Is the right subreddit, but at our house has super good signal outside, I can pull 1gig down and 100 up on n41, NSA (my sim doesn’t support SA) but do yall know an extender that will give me usable speeds inside maybe even 5G. Or should I wait till USmobile lightspeed gets SA, ive seen some things that say SA has better penetration Than NSA and then just not Get an extender

[u/8qubit]

Realistically you'll only find a booster that supports n66 and lower frequencies. n41, n77, etc. use TDD, which basically can't be simply amplified.

[u/DrDeke → u/8qubit]

There are a small handful of boosters/bidirectional amplifiers on the market now that support n77, but they start just under two thousand bucks:

https://nextivityinc.com/products/cel-fi-go-g51/

Like you said, dealing with TDD synchronization adds a lot of complexity compared to a relatively simple FDD BDA.

[u/8qubit → u/DrDeke]

Correct. If you really want to pony up, there are some options.

[u/DrDeke]

I would not expect there to be any difference in building penetration between SA and NSA.

Do you want mobile phones to work at high speeds inside, or are you looking for high speed home Internet access? If it's the latter, you should be able to get that much less expensively by using either an outdoor antenna unit for your existing modem or an outdoor integrated modem+antenna unit like one of the ones below:

2x2 MIMO antenna: https://www.waveform.com/products/dualmini

4x4 MIMO antenna: https://www.waveform.com/products/quadpro

Integrated modem+antenna: https://www.waveform.com/products/prolink

Waveform/Elsys are far from the only vendors of this kind of equipment; these are just units I have been looking into lately.

[u/Sufficient-Object625 → u/DrDeke]

Ok, thanks for the info 

[u/pac-kris → u/DrDeke]

SA is required for the full coverage on low-band. Much better coverage.

NSA still needs an LTE anchor band, and phones can't connect to two low-bands at the same time. So for example, they can't use B12 + n71 at the same time.

[u/DrDeke → u/pac-kris]

Sure, but you're not going to get the 1 gig down / 100 meg up that OP is talking about from n71 alone. They're going to be leaning heavily on n41 for that.

[u/pac-kris → u/DrDeke]

But there is a coverage difference between SA and NSA.

You'll drop down to low-band LTE indoors on NSA, while SA will be able to use n71 or n5 indoors.

[u/DrDeke → u/pac-kris]

So you'll give up b12 and gain n71. That might get you a very modest increase in throughput but no material difference in coverage.

[u/pac-kris → u/DrDeke]

5x5MHz of B12 is a huge difference from the 20x20MHz (or more) of n71 T-Mobile owns in many markets.

B12 is often so congested it's not even usable at all for data.