Boosters amplify the signal of a mobile phone or a cellular base station to provide better data and voice coverage, typically inside a building or a vehicle. Unlike femtocells, which mobile operators have been offering recently to improve their subscribers' indoor mobile experience, boosters don't redirect any traffic to the user's wired broadband connection but instead simply boost the connection between the phone and the existing cell tower.

Privately held Wilson says it will sell about 200,000 boosters this year, approximately 60 percent of them for use in vehicles. Prices range from about $100 to thousands of dollars for a large in-building system. The company offers units for both GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) networks and now has LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and WiMax products in beta testing. It expects to start selling the LTE and WiMax products in the first quarter of next year, said Chief Operations Officer Joe Banos.

Wilson is fighting what it sees as carrier resistance to signal boosters stemming from concerns over interference with their own networks. The cellular industry group CTIA has asked the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to rule that any device that uses a mobile operator's frequencies has to be approved by the carrier. Wilson contends that its current boosters don't cause interference but that some others do, and it wants the FCC to impose stricter requirements on new signal boosters to solve the problem.

The new site, Hear-Me.org, is part of Wilson's ongoing campaign to make sure third-party vendors can continue to provide boosters as long as they don't interfere with carrier networks. It offers written testimonials and videos by users who say they depend on signal boosters for either personal or public-safety calls. In addition, the site includes information about the issue, a list of government agencies that say they rely on boosters, and a link to write to lawmakers and others about the need for boosters.