‘Booster solved my missed call troubles’
Oliver Dempsey needs good mobile phone coverage to keep his Tradesman.ie business going.
Putting 62,000 consumers a year in contact with electricians, plumbers, carpenters and small builders keeps him very busy.
And personal contact with a trademark big smile is his calling card in business.
‘I’d get calls from clients all the time and I have always prided myself at being available,’ he said.
Usually this isn’t a problem as although his business is in the countryside, the mobile signal in the area is normally good. He is on the old main N7 route between Portlaoise and Kildare.
However, the problems started when he moved into an office that had been built with a lot of steel in its frame.
‘Steel really messes with mobile reception. In one half of the office, it was completely gone. I’d get one bar at best – or often none – and calls would drop off mid conversation.
‘You could be talking you couldn’t hear them but they could hear you. The biggest problem was people were ringing me but my phone wasn’t ringing, so I never knew about the call,’ he said.
This is a serious problem for any business. Nobody leaves messages any more – they just expect you to see a missed call number and to ring them back when it’s convenient.
But Oliver sometimes didn’t receive the missed-call messages, so some clients thought he was ignoring them.
He ordered Stella Doradus’s mobile phone repeater kit and installed the exterior aerial on an outside wall pointing towards the nearest mobile phone mast.
‘It was absolutely fantastic. The problem was solved,’ he said.
He welcomes ComReg’s recent decision to legalise certain mobile signal repeaters, including Stella Doradus which, he says, is a godsend for businesses like his who need to boost mobile signals.
‘I was delighted when the whole thing became legal. For far too long it was a grey area,’ he said.