AT&T launching 3G Microcell in some markets in the next few days?
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Sep 18th 2009 12:05PM
posted Sep 18th 2009 12:05PM
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They need to upgrade the Uverse RG to the new 2WIRE that has microcell built in.
IDIOTS!
I don't want my cell phone connecting to somebody else's femtocell and my conversations being teransmitted on THEIR IP where the signal can be sniffed/decoded/listened to/recorded.
Granted, people can crack GSM, but that requires equipment. Network sniffers and cracking scripts don't beyond that which a person operating this thing would already have.
On the other hand, how long before somebody cracks these things into becoming a GSM scanner and snooping device?
I'll pay for the box and activation fee...
But I won't give them a dime beyond that... So they better not even think of charging me a monthly fee to take the burden off of their network...
Depends on how they implement it. I think the Sprint unit is $10 a month, and you get unlimited air time as long as your connected to the microcell. Depending on your usage patterns you might be able to even downgrade your normal monthly minutes and come out ahead on your monthly bill. If your like I am and have no land line that's pretty attractive.
might i get cancer from having a cell tower at home?
Alright, I'm sure some troll is going to rip me for my ignorance, but what does this do?
It's like a mini cell tower that uses your broadband internet.
If you live in a cave but have DSL you can have 5 bars of 3G! that... works!
It delivers 3G cell signal to your surroundings by piggy-backing off your broadband internet connection. You'd volunteer to become their cell tower.
You lock it down by putting in specific phone ID's however, so you don't give your neighbors the signal.
It's a mini tower that uses your internet service and your electricity to provide cell phone coverage that you are already paying AT&T to provide in the first place.
(Also, it only provides 3G coverage, no regular GSM/EDGE due to technical issues.)
It'll help take the load off their cell towers and give you a less gimped AT&T 3G experience.
It is the answer to how to properly handle Google Voice with only cell phones (*).
I eagerly await...
[when you have a family where does the "home phone" call go? Your cell phone? Your spouse's? Kid A's? Kid B's? Dear Ol' Ma's? That's for Google voice to handle. And this microcell femtocell (!!) makes it possible to totally dump the landline]
Bad cell coverage is not always AT&T's fault. I live about 1/2 a mile from 3(!) different towers. Due to terrain, I still get spotty coverage at my house. I really can't blame AT&T or expect them to add a new tower just for my street...
A MicroCell is the perfect solution for these type of cases. I'll happily pay for the device, but they just better not try charging an additional monthly fee for minutes that are using my internet connection...
Not their fault? If they can't put a tower to cover your street, then they can't expect to get money from you.
So they have to make a choice, cover you and get your money or don't cover you and don't get your money. Sometimes not covering you might be the smarter choice.
But not covering you and them still getting your money doesn't make any sense.
@ why not the LS2LS7?
"So they have to make a choice, cover you and get your money or don't cover you and don't get your money."
So you're saying that before you can sign-up for service, your service provider should send a tech into your basement to see if you qualify to have the service. If reception isn't good enough to get through terrain and/or the aluminum siding on your house, you won't be approved... You'll just need to stick with a house phone - that or pay for satellite phone service? Your approach seems to be a slippery slope...
I guess I see it this way - most carriers allow 30 days to test the service and get out of it without major fees... If you choose to keep it (with poor reception), or change the game by moving to an area where reception isn't as good, then a femtocell is a great option. You can also pay to break your contract, and give the carrier back some of the money they subsidized for your phone, or tough it out and switch once your contract expires.
LOL @ Zacks Investment Research
Why the heck should I invest potentially hundreds of dollars in a microcell when I can just pay my cable company $5-10/month extra for a VoIP land line and have ATT forward my calls to it? And of course who the heck uses 3G in their own home when they can just ping a wireless router?
@ Scoot
Text messages
@ Scott Huddleston
Certainly 1 good reason, but I think the majority of microcells would be used in areas with poor but not non-existent service. In my apartment, for instance, service is so poor that you cannot hold a call for more than a few seconds, but SMS messages can be sent and received just fine. Would a microcell be able to be installed in areas with absolutely no reception from a main tower?
@Scoot: $5 to $10 a month is a deal for Voip. Charter charges $30/mo if you have tv/data already, otherwise it's $45/mo. Who is your cable provider?
I used to have att (work phone) that had the neat feature to not work in my apartment, I had to go out to the parking lot to anser a call, which worked great when it was raining.
As far as I understand, yes. Even if you have zero bars you will have reception with the femtocell, so long as you have an internet connection available.
Main advantage for me is just using one handset for all my calls. If I were to switch over to a voip handset then I have another device to deal with. You can think of this is as a roundabout way to make your cell phone act like a cordless phone.
So do you still pay the same cell data rates or are you getting better than wireless speeds for free while at home cell phone browsing?
It depends on how they implement it. I believe Sprint is $10/mo and you get unlimited airtime as long as you are connected to the microcell. Verizion you pay $200 or whatever for the unit and get absolutely nothing but better signal wherever the microcell is.
If they get people to pay for this it'll be the biggest coup since bottled water.
Can you use two phones with this that are on a family plan? If so, I'm in.
I think I've seen that they work with up to 8 phones
This device makes no sense when there are cell phone which also have wifi built in.
It does if you can't receive calls on that phone via WiFi.
Seamless cel to Wifi transitions are actually more difficult than you'd think. Most phones do support it don't do it particularly well.
Well if your phone does have Wifi (which not all do) AND you don't use your phone to make voice calls, then I agree this product makes no sense. But since most people still use their phone primarily for voice calls (and not VoIP through Wifi), I think this product might appeal to some people.
Agreed. Phones w/ built-in WiFi should be able to provide the same functionality in a local 802.11x network without need for this device.
I have always thought Apple's Airport base stations would be programmed to do this exact thing with the iPhone. Imagine coming home, your iPhone joins your home network and suddenly all your home telephone handsets now ring/receive calls placed to your mobile number. No need to carry your iPhone on your person when you are at home.
If I have a weak signal why would I pay a monthly charge for the privilege of being their new micro-cell? I'm just gonna get a signal amplifier. There are plenty of choices.
http://www.google.com/products?q=gsm+cdma+booster&hl=en&aq=f
I've got one and it does not work that well. The range it poor (the increased bars drop off dramatically after 10ft!) and it relies on your house getting a decent signal to start with.
Both problems are solved by a MicroCell.
@liuping
"I've got one and it does not work that well."
Your empirical data has swayed me...~sarcasm
There are plenty of bad ones out there. If you want a good one your gonna have to shell out a few bills.
"Both problems are solved by a MicroCell."
Try again. a Micro-Cell simply trades one set of problems for a new set. Unless you have absolutely no signal where you set up the device you are going to have problems locking on. We have an industrial MC where I work and many times the phone shows 2 bars. The reason? There is a tower within line-of-site (we're on the 69th floor...no really) and if you walk close enough to the side of the room the tower is closest to it will switch to the tower despite the MC being closer/stronger signal. No amount of coaxing will get it to switch back. The AT&T engineer (he came on-site and measured the signal strength) finally just instructed us to pull the battery whenever it happens.
Then there is the added recurring cost.
I'd also like to know if data usage on the MC counts against the 5GB data cap on the plan even though it's MY bandwidth?
Wait, so If I get a MicroCell and plug it in to the Ethernet jack at our branch office in Paris, can I make and receive calls w/o paying intl calling fees?
the sprint femtocell has gps which ensures you're within the US prior to providing you service. I assume the at&t one will be the same. so to answer your question, no
I figured as much. So it would be a carrier limitation, not a technical limitation. Would be nice if someone comes out with a 3rd party/non-carrier version of this device.
AT&T, or Sprint, or Verizon Femtocells can only operate in areas where they are licensed to be in. I'm guessing if you put up a Femtocell in an area the provider is not licenesed to be in, it could cause issues with stuff that is licensed to operate on those freqs or whatever.... Or so I think...
Also it applies to inside the states... If AT&T or whoever is not licensed to be in a specific county or something in the United states, your femtocell won't work there no matter what.
Well since any product would still have to connect to the carriers WAN to complete your call I'm not sure said carrier would be too keen on allowing them to connect and "robbing" them of the extra revenue.
For those ripping on this... Seriously for those of us that live in a place with bad cell coverage this is huge. As it is I had to switch from iPhones to BB on Verizon recently because we get such poor coverage at my house. And my company gets a big discount on AT&T service. So they can have their $10 or $15 a month from me for this for sure... I will gladly pay for this to have awesome coverage at my house.
Dude, you aren't supposed to TELL them you'd pay more for it.
Microcells are actually just a symptom of the abusive oligopoly of the cell phone carriers. It would be MUCH MUCH cheaper for consumers to have their cell phones access their home broadband via their existing WiFi routers rather than pay a ridiculous amount of money to get a Microcell. The technology to do so is quite mundane as T-Mobile has offered a service whereby calls made from within T-Mobile WiFi hotspots could automatically be routed for free over WiFi.
Of course a cell phone would need WiFi to do this, but many phones already have WiFi and in any case a WiFi enabled phone doesn't cost much more than a regular cell phone.
The problem is that the cell phone oligopoly would never allow this convenience because they can't charge for this. Microcells are just an elaborate mechanism to charge consumers for something that they otherwise would get for free. We don't see this technology in use because currently the cell phone oligopoly has the right to cripple the functionality of any phone that uses their network. We should pressure the FCC to prevent cell phone carriers from crippling phones.
Don't forget that wifi drains your phone battery extremely fast when compared to normal GSM signals.
@fincan Also, don't forget that 3G drains your battery even faster than WiFi, which is the topic of this article.
Remember the vast, vast majority of cells out there are dumbphones.. not smartphones.. How many dumbphones have WiFi? (I honestly don't know.. but it can't be that much.) Something like that would only be used by a small group of people.. probably not worth supporting when it is much easier to support plopping a femtocell in a house.
@Dorf: Many more phones would have WiFi if cell phone providers did not have the right to cripple the phones that ran on their networks. Verizon has always banned any of its phones from having WiFi because it would allow their customers to access the internet without paying them cash - why else do you thing the Blackberry Storm never had WiFi. It is only recently that Verizon relented in the face of iPhone driven competition that they will allow a small number of WiFi enabled phones, but people who purchase these phones are FORCED to also purchase a data plan.
This gets back to my original point that cell phone providers must not be allowed to cripple the devices that access their network. It will cost very little for a manufacturer to add WiFi to a dumb phone.
As long as there are no monthly fees, I'll buy one. Having spot-on coverage in my house would be fantastic, but I don't think i should supplement AT&T's network with my own broadband AND pay them monthly to do it.
so this off loads the data and phone calls completely when I’m using it from At&t's network and they still want me to pay for the device as well huh????? Are there also devices that just amplify the signal from At&t's cell tower so that I get a better signal in the basement? what is the cheapest of these that works?
Something like this is an alternative if you don't mind running your own cable.
http://www.repeaterstore.com/products/repeaterkits/wi-ex/zboost-dual-band.html