RV wifi booster: which box actually fixes your problem

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Two problems, one word: what people mean by "weak signal"

Before any hardware decision, name the failure. Stand outside the RV and look at your phone. Bars but slow campground wifi is a distance problem. No bars is a coverage problem. They look identical from inside the rig and they need completely different equipment.

The mistake this table is built to prevent: buying an extender because the campground wifi is unusable, when the reason it is unusable is that two hundred other people are sharing it. An extender rebroadcasts a congested network faithfully. You get a stronger connection to the same traffic jam.

The FCC rule most buying guides leave out

A cellular signal booster is a radio transmitter, and the FCC regulates it as one. Its consumer signal booster page describes these devices as designed to be used out of the box by individuals to improve their wireless coverage within a limited area such as a home, car, boat, or recreational vehicle, and it states plainly that there are two things you need to do in order to use one:

1. Get approval from your wireless provider.
2. Register the specific booster with your wireless provider before turning it on.

Registration costs nothing: the FCC requires every provider that permits boosters to run a free registration system. At a minimum, providers collect the name of the owner or operator, the make, model and serial number of the device, the location of the device, and the date of initial operation.

Consumer boosters sold after March 1, 2014 carry an FCC consumer label, and the FCC notes that several major carriers have approved all boosters carrying it.

Two dates matter for how you read that last point. The FCC adopted these rules in March 2014, and the consumer page carries an update stamp of March 14, 2016, with the FAQ stamped June 15, 2016.

The carrier names listed there are therefore a 2016 snapshot, so treat them as evidence that the approval mechanism exists rather than as a current map of who owns which network, and check your own provider's registration page before you buy.

Three more requirements are worth knowing before money changes hands, because each one can turn a purchase into a mistake:

• Consumer label, not industrial. The FCC says boosters labelled for Industrial Use require special installation expertise and may only be used by FCC licensees or those given special permission. A cheap listing that turns out to be an industrial unit is not a bargain, it is a device you are not permitted to operate.
• Interference ends the argument. If the FCC or any wireless provider, yours or anyone else's, tells you your booster is causing interference, the FCC's position is that you must shut it down until you can fix the problem. Complying with every other rule does not exempt you.
• A factory-fitted booster still needs registering, and so do your passengers. If your RV came with a built-in booster, the FCC states you must register it with your wireless provider before use, and that passengers who use it on a regular, sustained basis must also register it with their own provider. Registration and labelling details are usually in the owner's manual or from the dealer.

The 911 trade-off, stated in full

The warning label the FCC requires on these devices reads that E911 location information may not be provided or may be inaccurate for calls served by using the device. That deserves more weight in an RV than in a house, because the whole point of the trip is being somewhere you cannot describe by street address.

The FCC states the other half of the trade in the same breath, and so will we: boosters may help you complete calls, including calls to 911, in areas where you previously could not, and the Commission's stated position is that each person should decide whether to use one given their individual circumstances.

A completed call with imprecise location beats a call that never connects. Knowing which one you have is the part worth carrying.

Compare RV router options against a booster before you buy either

This is where the honest answer stops being about boosters. A booster improves the signal from the carrier you already use. It cannot change which carrier you are asking, and in a lot of the country the real problem is not that the signal is weak, it is that your particular network is weak there while another one is fine.

That is the case for a cellular router or hotspot instead. It carries its own data plan, it puts out a private network the whole rig shares, and multi-carrier models can move between networks depending on where you parked.

Compare RV router choices on that one axis first, ahead of speed claims: a device locked to one network has the same blind spots your phone does.

Our Home Fi review works through a contract-free multi-carrier hotspot in detail, including the published plan tiers and the honest limit that no cellular device escapes.

If the answer to "are there bars here" is usually no rather than weak, neither box is your purchase and satellite internet for an RV prices the only technology that works there. The four mechanisms sit side by side on our RV internet comparison.

See Home Fi hotspot plans

Before you buy, in order

1. Name the failure. Step outside and read your phone. Weak bars is a coverage problem; full bars with slow park wifi is a congestion or distance problem.
2. Check the sites you actually visit. One weekend of no service is a different purchase from a route that is marginal everywhere.
3. If it is cellular, confirm the consumer label and your provider's registration process before ordering, not after.
4. Ask whether a different network solves it more cheaply than amplifying your current one.
5. Budget the power. A booster or router is a small draw, but it is a continuous one, and off grid every continuous load comes out of the same battery. Our what will it run calculator takes the figure from the device's own label.

Common questions