# AT&T Femtocell



## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Just found out today that AT&T has released (after testing in the Charlotte area) their Femtocell to improve reception in your home.

Basically for $150, you can:

add a microcell to your house that uses YOUR internet connection to improve your 3G reception within your home.

It also relieves traffic on their normal cell towers.

Shouldn't they be paying us to install these?

I currently use wifi within the house for the data connection so it's a real puzzle why I need to pay for poor coverage within the house.

And I know, it's AT&T. . .


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## rudeney (May 28, 2007)

Oh, I'm sure my ISP (Charter) would just love for me to install this and use their service to help AT&T!:uglyhamme


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

When I had low signal problems at my home location with T-Mobile, they offered to sell a device that would interface with my cable broadband connection to "supplement" the wireless signal, and 'only' charge me $10/m for the privilege. 

I thought they were nuts to think anyone would fall that less than wonderful 'opportunity'. I had my # ported to another carrier with far better coverage in my home region.


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## barryb (Aug 27, 2007)

We have zero cell service at our home... I will be getting one of these when available in our area.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Why tie up your web connection? Use something like this:

http://www.solidsignal.com/cview.asp?d=mobile-equipment&c=Signal Repeaters&mc=07

The WiEx unit works fine for me for normal Cell use. I don't use my Cell for web access, so I can't comment there.


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## VegasDen (Jul 12, 2007)

It'll be interesting to see what happens when they go national. Sprint offers the Airrave (same concept; price is $100 for the unit plus $4.99 a month for the "service"). Search sites such as Slickdeals and you'll see that Sprint will "eat the cost" if the customer is persistent enough about low signal in their home.


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## Zellio (Mar 8, 2009)

At&t. Your world. Delivered *cough*fromanotherprovider*cough*


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## deaincaelo (Feb 5, 2009)

hrm, nevermind AT&T. I want one for me.

I'd totally put up a cheap mini tower to let people use my unused bandwidth if everyone else did too.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Barry, PM me if you want one. . . the AT&T stores have them in stock. The sales kid describing the 'opportunity' for me to buy one said they had sold 15 in 2 days.

While there's no montly additional cost, I fundamentally can't buy one (yet) until I exhaust the complaints on the poor coverage.

We used the iPhones here at the house for a month with no problem before cancelling our Verizon contracts early this year. Then the coverage went away!


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## Movieman (May 9, 2009)

Nick said:


> When I had low signal problems at my home location with T-Mobile, they offered to sell a device that would interface with my cable broadband connection to "supplement" the wireless signal, and 'only' charge me $10/m for the privilege.
> 
> I thought they were nuts to think anyone would fall that less than wonderful 'opportunity'. I had my # ported to another carrier with far better coverage in my home region.


They called it @Home service. You didnt have to pay the fee unless you wanted unlimited service in the wifi calling. And that $10 covered every wifi you can get access to not just your home. (i launched this service for T-Mobile when I worked for them).

AT&T's idea is not new. In the 90's when I worked for them a few of us had repeaters installed in our homes to test unlimited home calling at the time. It was too expensive back them. I think its better to use the WIFI network at home rather than having this mini site installed. In my new home no carrier other than MetroPCS works. Since T-Mobile gave me that $49.99 unlimited calling plan I use my Linksys N router to get very good signal in my house. I dont pay the fee since my plan is already unlimited nationwide.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Good news, bad news. . . I decided to get one Saturday since a lost/missed call can cost me more than $150 and so far. . . it's not working.

Even though the system sent me a text message saying it configured and is ready to use, it never becomes available to my phones.

Day 3 and waiting on escalation call.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Day 5 and still not working. . . just spent an hour on the phone with no resolution.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Day 6, it's currently scheduled for resolution between Monday and Thursday of next week. . . Perhaps their testing wasn't sufficient before releasing to the test markets?


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## dorfd1 (Jul 16, 2008)

dennisj00 said:


> Just found out today that AT&T has released (after testing in the Charlotte area) their Femtocell to improve reception in your home.
> 
> Basically for $150, you can:
> 
> ...


cincinnatibell has fusion wifi which is a phone that can do voice cell tower and wifi. using wifi for voice does not cost extra and your minutes don't decrease.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Unfortunately, most of us aren't in Cinncinatti (sp?) . . .


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

Some of us used to live there and escaped!!

I notice in my home my I phone constancly switches between the G network with full bars to Edge at only one or two bars. This might be a solution but I sure don't want to pay $150.00 for it.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Sounds like you have some reception. Here on the deck, we have 5 bars. Inside the house, we often get voice mail - the NEXT day - that we had a call. Or have to walk to the window or outside to make a call.

The wierd part is we tried the phones for two months (Jan - Feb) before switching from Verizon -perfect coverage in the house.

Maybe leaves on the trees?


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Back home after traveling for the weekend. . . AT&T says today they'll submit a GPS override -- which I thought was submitted last Thursday when I gave them my home coordinates. . . we'll see how long this takes.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

dennisj00 said:


> Back home after traveling for the weekend. . . AT&T says today they'll submit a GPS override -- which I thought was submitted last Thursday when I gave them my home coordinates. . . we'll see how long this takes.


I guess Lake Norman is outside their definition of "Charlotte" in the limited trial?

I assume that eventually they will open it up to the entire US so such things will not be an issue.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Not from the service map. . . I'm in Mecklenburg county and actually bought the unit at an AT&T store in Mooresville, 12 miles north in Irdell county. (also in the service map)

I think I said in an earlier post that their test wasn't long enough!

Edit: Didn't see you were from Mooresville!
Second edit . . You're from MORRISVILLE . . . west of Raleigh! Nevermind!


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## Zellio (Mar 8, 2009)

dennisj00 said:


> Not from the service map. . . I'm in Mecklenburg county and actually bought the unit at an AT&T store in Mooresville, 12 miles north in Irdell county. (also in the service map)
> 
> I think I said in an earlier post that their test wasn't long enough!
> 
> ...


It's At&t. Did you actually expect them to get something right? :uglyhamme

At&t is a telephone version of the government, it's takes 19 million to do a job that someone else can do at $100,000 (And yes, I'm refering to the government paying someone 19 million to redesign the whitehouse.gov website)


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Made my daily call to check status and no progress. The CSR gladly offered to call me on Friday to confirm that it would be working!

I guess they're tired of me calling daily. . .


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

It's working!! Day 13 and an hour on the phone with a team of engineers and I remembered a VOIP optimizer (Linksys OCV-200) buried in the basement between my DSL modem and Router.

Apparently it changes the MTU and prevented the 3G from making VPN connections. I think it was basically useless in the Vonage calls, so I yanked it, rebooted the 3G and 10 minutes later we're micro celling.

Five bars anywhere in the house / out on the deck (where I had 5 3G bars before) and first few calls, voice quality is equally as good.

Case closed.


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## barryb (Aug 27, 2007)

dennisj00 said:


> Barry, PM me if you want one. . . the AT&T stores have them in stock. The sales kid describing the 'opportunity' for me to buy one said they had sold 15 in 2 days.


My understanding is that whey will not allow them out of the test area. If you know something different: sign me up.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Barry, you're right. I learned a lot more after buying (and discussing with CSRs and Engineers). It's still a limited roll-out - Charlotte / Raleigh / Atlanta - I think.

It's supposed to go National around December / January. Probably depends on how the support calls go!


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## MikeW (May 16, 2002)

Wow...this and MMS to the iPhone. What a huge advance in technology this year...at least for AT&T. I've been following this for two years over at DSLReports. Funny that Sprint and T-MO have had this for a while now.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

and 75,000 applications for the iPhone . . .


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

dennisj00 said:


> and 75,000 applications for the iPhone . . .


Application numbers are really not relevant to anything. An Atari is still an Atari it doesn't matter if it has more games than the PS3 or XBOX.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Shades228 said:


> Application numbers are really not relevant to anything. An Atari is still an Atari it doesn't matter if it has more games than the PS3 or XBOX.


Perhaps if you only want a telephone.


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

dennisj00 said:


> Perhaps if you only want a telephone.


No my point was it's only relevant to what you want to do. Rather than turn this into a winmo vs palm vs android vs iphone thread. The fact that there are 75k doesn't mean anything because most of those programs are stupid things that someone created to learn how or variations of other programs like clocks.


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## wakajawaka (Sep 27, 2006)

Got my 3G Microcell on Sunday. Had it working in 30 minutes. It's a great solution for me, I'm glad they offered this option because the only other alternative is for me to move which isn't going to happen. I get lousy reception at my house from all the carriers. I am actually going to save money by getting this because I am going to drop my land line and slow DSL and go with Roadrunner. In the end I will save $20 a month, have unlimited calling from my house and go from 3.0 Mbps to 7 Mbps internet. So yeah, I'm glad AT&T gave me this option, only $50 after rebate.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

It's still not ready for prime time although it looks like they're going national around the first of the year.

I had 3 calls dropped this morning around 2-3 minutes into the call. At least I got them instead of finding out later!

Here's an interesting tool. . . http://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx --my Vista and IE7 have a problem with it, but it runs fine on other machines, including Win7/IE8.


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