Fix mobile black spots in warehouses, offices and basements with carrier-approved Cel-Fi repeaters and hybrid DAS. Site survey, design and carrier approval.
Half your warehouse has no bars. Staff walk to the roller door to take a call. Deliveries miss the tap-to-pay terminal in the back dock, and the fire panel monitoring sits on a mobile service that drops every second attempt. That is a coverage problem, not a plan problem — and no amount of switching carriers fixes it, because the signal is being stopped by your building, not your account.
SIP Connect surveys the site, designs the system, installs it and registers it with the carrier. We use carrier-approved equipment only. In Australia that is not a preference, it is the law.
Give us the building and we'll show you the range projects like it land in, and which class of system it needs. No contact details required.
A guide, not a quote — the real number comes from the site survey. What the figure depends on.
Mobile signal is radio, and radio is stopped by mass. The things that make a modern commercial building efficient are the same things that make it a Faraday cage:
— the standard warehouse and industrial wall. Concrete with steel reinforcement is close to opaque at 700MHz and above.
— the metallic oxide layer that keeps heat out also reflects mobile signal. A glass office tower can be worse than a brick one.
— a continuous conductive sheet wrapped around the building.
— below grade, surrounded by earth and steel. Usually zero signal without help.
— in outer-metro and industrial estates you may be several kilometres from the nearest site, arriving with little to spare before the walls take their cut.
Rack storage makes it worse again. A warehouse that tests fine when empty can lose coverage down every aisle once the racking is full of stock.
Every system does the same three things: collect the signal outside where it is still good, amplify it, and re-radiate it inside where it is not.
— mounted on the roof or the strongest external face, aimed at the serving tower.
— amplifies the carrier signal under carrier control, with automatic gain management so it can never interfere with the network.
— ceiling domes or panels distributing coverage through the space, cabled back to the head end.
What changes between a two thousand dollar job and a hundred thousand dollar one is scale: how many internal antennas, how far the cable runs, how many carriers, and whether the building needs a single repeater or a distributed system with multiple coverage units.
One donor antenna, one repeater, one to a handful of internal antennas. Covers a defined problem area — a back office, a dock, a level of a building — on one carrier at a time. This is the Cel-Fi GO class of device. It is the right answer for a small site, a single black spot, or a business where everyone is on the same network.
A head-end unit feeding multiple coverage units over structured cabling, each with its own internal antennas. Covers a whole building, and can run multiple carriers at once. This is the Cel-Fi QUATRA class. Most multi-tenant offices, medical centres, schools and mid-size warehouses land here.
For very large or very dense sites — hospitals, stadiums, high-rise, large logistics campuses — the answer moves to a fully engineered distributed antenna system, or to carrier small cells installed under a formal agreement with the carrier. These are carrier-led projects with long lead times, and we scope and coordinate them rather than pretending they are an off-the-shelf install.
Under the Radiocommunications Act 1992, operating a mobile repeater in Australia without authorisation from the carrier whose spectrum it amplifies is an offence. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has banned the sale and use of non-compliant boosters, and the penalties are not nominal — they run to substantial fines and, at the top of the scale, imprisonment.
This is not regulatory theatre. An unapproved booster does not just amplify your signal; it transmits back into the carrier network. A badly behaved unit raises the noise floor of the entire cell, degrading service for every other user on that tower, including emergency calls. Carriers detect them and they do get traced.
What that means in practice:
We handle the registration as part of the job. You should not have to become an expert in spectrum law to get a bar of signal in your own warehouse.
— pick-and-pack scanners, driver handhelds, dock supervisors on mobile.
— steel-clad production floors where the office has signal and the plant does not.
— EFTPOS and tap-to-pay falling back to paper, and staff unable to take supplier calls.
— lead-lined imaging rooms, and patients who cannot call a lift home.
— increasingly a work-health-and-safety question, not a convenience one.
— where the building owner is fielding the same complaint from every floor.
Nothing is quoted firm until someone has measured the building. A survey records:
The survey output is a design and a fixed-price quote. If the survey shows a booster will not help — which happens, usually when there is no usable signal outside to start with — we will tell you that, and talk about the alternatives instead.
A repeater amplifies what is already there. If the outside signal is genuinely absent, there is nothing to amplify, and the honest answers are different ones:
over your existing internet — free, immediate, and enough for a lot of sites.
— if the problem is really that people cannot be reached, a desk and mobile app extension on a hosted PBX solves it without touching radio at all.
— for genuinely remote sites.
We would rather sell you the thing that works.
Fixing one warehouse is a job. Fixing forty branches is a programme, and the difference is not the radio — it is the coordination. Retail chains, franchise networks and branch networks come to us with the same pattern: every site has the same complaint and none of them has the same building.
What that looks like in practice:
applied to every site, so the results are comparable and you can rank which locations to do first instead of arguing about it.
where the buildings allow it — the same units, the same spares, one set of things for your team to learn.
you sign off, rather than forty separate bookings you have to chase.
what was measured, what was installed, where it is mounted and what it was registered as, handed over as a record you can actually use at handover or audit.
for the whole programme, in Greensborough, on Australian time.
Coverage work happens inside occupied buildings, which means the install is as much a logistics problem as a technical one. Roof access, height-access equipment, cable through a live ceiling, and a donor antenna on someone else’s roof.
where trading hours or production cannot be interrupted — nights and weekends are normal for this work, not an exception.
we deal with centre management, permits and induction requirements rather than leaving that with your store manager.
inductions, escorts, police checks and access procedures where the site requires them.
we supply the mounting detail and the equipment documentation that gets the request across the line.
Not every coverage problem is a building. Service vehicles, utes and trucks working outer-metro and regional runs lose signal the same way, and the fix is the same idea in a smaller package — a roof antenna, an in-cab repeater, carrier-approved and registered like any other.
For genuinely remote sites where there is no usable signal to amplify, the honest answer is satellite rather than a repeater, and we will say so. Talk to us about the run your vehicles actually do and we will tell you which of the two you need.
Only with the carrier’s authorisation. Operating a repeater on a carrier’s spectrum without permission is an offence under the Radiocommunications Act 1992, and ACMA has banned non-compliant devices outright. Approved equipment, installed and registered with the carrier, is entirely legal — and that is what we install.
Sometimes. A single repeater with one internal antenna covers a defined area, and in an open-plan shed with good outside signal that can be a large one. Racking, internal walls, cool rooms and mezzanines all cut it down, which is why coverage is designed from a walk test rather than from floor area alone.
A single repeater of the Cel-Fi GO class runs one carrier at a time — you choose which. Covering Telstra, Optus and Vodafone/TPG simultaneously means either multiple units or a hybrid DAS, which is the usual answer for a workplace where staff and visitors are on different networks.
Yes. The system amplifies the carrier’s 4G and 5G service, so data throughput improves along with voice and SMS. It does not create bandwidth that the tower does not have, so a congested cell is still a congested cell — it just reaches you properly.
Please do not. The wideband repeaters sold cheaply through overseas marketplaces are not approved for use in Australia, are illegal to operate, and interfere with the network around you. They are also the most common reason a site’s coverage gets worse rather than better.
A single-repeater install is typically a day on site after the survey. A hybrid DAS across a full building is usually a few days, depending on cable runs and access. Carrier registration runs in parallel and does not hold up the install.
No, but you do need the owner’s or landlord’s consent, because the donor antenna is mounted externally and cable is run through the building fabric. We can provide the documentation that makes that conversation straightforward.
A single-carrier repeater covering one problem area is a few thousand dollars installed. A multi-carrier hybrid DAS across a whole building runs into the tens of thousands. The estimator on this page gives you an indicative market range from the building details; the firm number comes from the site survey.
No. A repeater amplifies existing signal; it cannot create it. If the survey finds nothing usable outside, we will say so and point you at Wi-Fi calling, a fixed line with a phone system, or satellite instead.
Our install crews are Melbourne-based and cover the metro area and the north-east corridor from Greensborough. We do take on regional Victorian sites — talk to us about the location and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.
Yes, and it is a large part of what this work is. Every site gets the same survey standard so the results are comparable, hardware is kept common across the estate wherever the buildings allow, and you get one schedule, one contact and per-site documentation rather than forty separate jobs to chase.
Yes. Nights and weekends are normal for coverage work, because the cabling and the ceiling access are disruptive during the day. For shopping-centre sites we deal with centre management, permits and inductions rather than leaving that to your store manager.
Yes — a roof antenna and an in-cab repeater, carrier-approved and registered the same way a building system is. If the run genuinely has no signal to amplify, satellite is the honest answer instead, and we will tell you that.
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Need a hand?
Talk to our Greensborough team — or leave a message and we’ll come back to you.