Tried a signal booster from Amazon and it made things worse

I picked up a $40 signal booster for my T-Mobile hotspot last month because my usual spot in the house only gets 1 bar. Hooked it up in the living room window like the instructions said, and for the first week it seemed okay. Then my speeds started dropping to like 2 Mbps at night, way slower than before. Turns out the booster was actually picking up interference from my neighbor's new solar setup and amplifying the noise instead of the signal. I learned the hard way that cheap boosters can mess with your connection if you don't know what frequencies to filter. Now I'm back to just taping my hotspot to the highest shelf in the kitchen. Has anyone else had a booster backfire on them like this?

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gavin_reed4mo ago

Grabbed a cheap weboost off ebay and taped it to the window frame, fixed my speeds dead simple.

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tessa3684mo ago

No joke, same thing happened with me. I grabbed a random one off fb marketplace for like twenty bucks, stuck it in my upstairs window, and it made a huge difference for streaming and stuff. It's funny how something so janky can work that well. @gavin_reed you're totally right though, it's wild what a cheap booster will do in the right spot. My remote work setup thanks me every day.

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ellis.robert4mo ago

stuck it in my upstairs window" - you think the height actually matters more than the placement? Or was it just the only spot that made sense?

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