I have just inherited 3 seasonal cottages in Piermont, NH USA. There is no high speed internet, no cable, and no usable as-is cell reception there. Apparently people expect this sort of thing when on vacation . Wandering around the camp with a verizon and a t-mobile cellphone, we did manage to find 1 bar of reception on the T-mobile phone, which was roaming from the Unicel network, probably 850MHz band. I think AT&T acquired this part of Unicel a couple years ago, based on Wikipedia info.

I have read that if I can get a consistant 2 bars of service, a repeater might provide cell service for a small area.

Is it likely that I can climb a tree for the 2 bars, post an antenna up there and have the amplifier inside one of the nearby cabins? Is there any good way of finding out if this is going to work before I spend the money on the equipment, and can't return it?

If I do manage to get this working, can I piggyback some 3G quality WiFi off AT&Ts network?