ATT MicroCell

[silencertalk]

If you have bad ATT cell reception at home or work...

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/why/3gmicrocell/

It is $150 and you still use up your minutes.

If you call customer service and say you need it but complain about the price, they will offer you a $100 rebate. If you complain more, they will give it to you for free.

They look for:

1. People who are out of contract who might dump the service.

2. People who are looking to get rid of their land-line and use their mobile more minutes, if only they had better reception at home.

3. People who have a home office.

4. People who don't have a land-line and are worried about being able to reach emergency services.

5. People who have a lot of phones - 5 to 10.

I just plugged it in and went from 1-2 signal bars to 4-5.

It is NOT a 'signal booster' as they market it as. It is a cell tower, in your house - and sends the calls through the internet.

[chrismartin]

A friend of mine got one as well. He says it works well.

I need to try the bitch and complain method to see if I can get a free one. Can't hurt.

[Fastflt1]

Thanks for the tip Robert.

Must be a better signal because of the larger antenna area?

My Nexus one has portable wifi that functions well for 4 or 5 devices at speeds of 4mb down/1mb up.

[JohnnyC]

It's all dependent on having high speed internet at your house though. Sure, most people have cable, dsl, etc., but in an emergency you're relying on maintaining your internet connection, power, etc. If your primary means of communication is your cell phone then I could see it if you have consistently shitty reception, otherwise it's just turning your cell phone into a VoIP phone but you're still using up your minutes. I would think it a better option to just call-forward your number to a VoIP line and leave your cell phone off if you're having serious reception issues.

Of course none of those arguments matter if you can wrangle it for free, then who cares unless your internet provider decides to throttle your bandwidth or something.

[Schulze]

" Calls transfer out, but don't transfer in. Calls seamlessly transfer from the 3G MicroCell to the strongest available AT&T cell tower signal. However, calls connected on the cell tower do not transfer to the 3G MicroCell."

Can anyone verify that they still can't receive incoming calls?

[Conqueror]

So it's basically a $150 hardware version of Skype? I guess if I was trying to ditch my landline it might make some sense, but it doesn't make much sense to me if you also have a landline.

[silencertalk]

No, it is a cell phone tower for your house, in case your ATT cell phone does not work well enough at home. I had no signal in my basement workshop and now I do. It is not VOIP.

[silencertalk]

" Calls transfer out, but don't transfer in. Calls seamlessly transfer from the 3G MicroCell to the strongest available AT&T cell tower signal. However, calls connected on the cell tower do not transfer to the 3G MicroCell."

Can anyone verify that they still can't receive incoming calls?

Of course it can receive incoming calls. They are saying that if you are on an hour long drive and arrive home, the call won't switch over to your micro cell. I think they did that because they were getting dropped calls with it changing back and forth so they killed that feature.

[JohnInNH]

No, it is a cell phone tower for your house, in case your ATT cell phone does not work well enough at home. I had no signal in my basement workshop and now I do. It is not VOIP.

If you have crappy Internet DSL then what... If Vonage sucks with your internet connection won't this? .. It's still going over the net so why is that different than VOIP?

[silencertalk]

Yes, it sends the data over your internet connection, as does Vonage also.

VOIP does not provide a cell tower in my house for my iPhone.

This is for people who use an ATT cell phone and want 4-5 signal bars when at home or work.

I can pick up a landline if I want to call out (and someone is not using it), but when someone calls my iPhone, I would rather have 4-5 bars than 1-2 or 0 if I am in my basement.

[JohnInNH]

Robert this does squat for rural folks who have a poor signal and slow unreliable internet. We need a true house antenna booster.

I have a steel roof like many of us do up north that shields the signal.. Outside I get 2.5 maybe 3 bars... inside Zero to 2 bars. if I had a piece of equipment that was a wi-fi type devise that then was connected to an antenna mounted outside I would drop my land line.

Thanks

[chrismartin]

Robert this does squat for rural folks who have a poor signal and slow unreliable internet. We need a true house antenna booster.

I have a steel roof like many of us do up north that shields the signal.. Outside I get 2.5 maybe 3 bars... inside Zero to 2 bars. if I had a piece of equipment that was a wi-fi type devise that then was connected to an antenna mounted outside I would drop my land line.

Thanks

Might want to check out:

http://www.wi-ex.com/index.aspx

They have external antennas and such to do just what you are attempting.
I haven't tried them myself.

[Abiqua]

if I had a piece of equipment that was a wi-fi type devise that then was connected to an antenna mounted outside I would drop my land line.

What you're looking for is a BDA or Bi-directional amplifier. Antenna inside, antenna outside, and a box in the middle that amplifies the signal going either way.

The device that Robert is talking about is generically called a "femtocell". Sprint markets one called the Airave, looks like a lot of other carriers do as well. I do know that Sprint will cave on pricing the same as Robert describes AT&T as doing, they'd rather give it away than lose you as a customer.

[mcinfantry]

I have a booster and microcell. It's odd, but booster works well with microcell too.

[silencertalk]

Robert this does squat for rural folks who have a poor signal and slow unreliable internet.

DSL is all you have available?

[JohnInNH]

Robert this does squat for rural folks who have a poor signal and slow unreliable internet.

DSL is all you have available?

Dial up at one house, and crappy DSL at work/home.

[mpallett]

Robert this does squat for rural folks who have a poor signal and slow unreliable internet.

DSL is all you have available?

Dial up at one house, and crappy DSL at work/home.

So ... even crappy internet will help. Voip calls (depending on the codec used ... lets assume the same quality of true voice, the G.711) use only 68K, unless you are having HUGE jitter / packet loss issues I would think it would be ok.

[chrismartin]

So ... even crappy internet will help. Voip calls (depending on the codec used ... lets assume the same quality of true voice, the G.711) use only 68K, unless you are having HUGE jitter / packet loss issues I would think it would be ok.

The GSM codec uses only 13K. Cel phone voice quality is much lower than G.711.

[Schulze]

" Calls transfer out, but don't transfer in. Calls seamlessly transfer from the 3G MicroCell to the strongest available AT&T cell tower signal. However, calls connected on the cell tower do not transfer to the 3G MicroCell."

Can anyone verify that they still can't receive incoming calls?

Of course it can receive incoming calls. They are saying that if you are on an hour long drive and arrive home, the call won't switch over to your micro cell. I think they did that because they were getting dropped calls with it changing back and forth so they killed that feature.

Thanks Robert, I was having a Schulze moment.

After reading on the ATT message boards about all the problems people have with these things, I'm going to just get a $300 Wilson repeater.

[silencertalk]

I have not had any problems with mine.

[smcharchan]

I set one up today. It works great. Thanks for the heads-up.

[silencertalk]

I am still happy with mine.

[Glock35]

maybe I have overlooked something, but this seems to have more vulnerability to ease dropping...not that it is an issue (who cares, I do not), just a thought as I like computer security/forensics. If this femtocell is still implementing the GSM encryption then it is no different, but if they have chose another method for the Internet data route, assuming a diff form of encryption which seems apparent, it may be vulnerably to a man in the middle via another femtocell device and the usual methods of wireless penetrating.
Just a thought...

Definitely like the idea; when I had a place in the city/downtown my reception was awful inside (iPhone 4 sucks)

[Hellrazor]

A friend of mine has one too and it works great. He went from 1 bar at home to basically full signal.

[CKOD]

maybe I have overlooked something, but this seems to have more vulnerability to ease dropping...not that it is an issue (who cares, I do not), just a thought as I like computer security/forensics. If this femtocell is still implementing the GSM encryption then it is no different, but if they have chose another method for the Internet data route, assuming a diff form of encryption which seems apparent, it may be vulnerably to a man in the middle via another femtocell device and the usual methods of wireless penetrating.Just a thought...

Definitely like the idea; when I had a place in the city/downtown my reception was awful inside (iPhone 4 sucks)

Femtocell + programmer for whatever programable ICs inside + yagi antennas + mad skills = lolz?