"R. Mark Clayton" <nospamclayton@btinternet.com> wrote in
news:od6dnTqCC4vUPAnV4p2dnAA@bt.com:

> There was no technical limit on range, so I used one with slight
> difficulty in Calais to book a hotel in England (~40km to mast) and on
> the DFDS Dana Regina about six hours out of Harwich in the North Sea.
> Exactly how far from land I don't know, but my estimate is ~100km!
>
>
>

I own this dual-band sellphone repeater:
http://www.cellantenna.com/repeater/cae50_gemini.htm
which was $US299 when I got mine but has gone up.

I bought the omnidirectional CAF822 stick antenna for my stepvan shop and
it's mounted just above the roofline for good coverage as the van turns.
Inside the van, the little panel antenna that comes with the repeater is
stuck to the bulkhead over my desk.

We took it out into the atlantic and were amazed at how far offshore I
could still use Alltel, even EVDO broadband internet, by hauling the stick
antenna up a halyard on the spreaders towards shore. 70 miles was about as
far out as we got and it was still giving the Verizon and Alltel phones
aboard good signals to use. We had one PCS phone aboard on ATT, but it
didn't fare as well on 1900 Mhz. The repeater covers all those bands
except iDen on Nextel.

70 db gain and an antenna 50' up help a lot on a boat!