How would you change AT&T's 3G MicroCell?
By Darren Murph 
posted November 27th 2009 11:51PM
posted November 27th 2009 11:51PM
posted November 27th 2009 11:51PM
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First
@dillon2011 - wow, you must feel really good about yourself now.
@crimson400 Well it has been a long day at work so give me a break
@dillon2011
Probably was if you were the FIRST to get there. Then again, you could have always left early and yelled FIRST as your drove home.
Make it a box
second
@Petergriffin325
with a name like that you must be an idiot, huh
at&t's network first
@WilliamH yes. i agree.
I've ditched my landline for it. Sure people can argue "oh, well we shouldn't be doing AT&T's job for them". And sure, in some cases that may be true. But in others, like mine and that of my best friends' parents, where we live will only be covered with a tower in our front lawns. It's not even out in the boonies or anything, it's near Los Angeles and outside of this very specific few blocks coverage is great, it's just that we're in a small valley right at the base of Cucamonga Peak and no carrier's signal gets through here very well. So for me, this is a blessing.
@Tenkiyohou
Well I live in LA too and I know too many people with iPhones who carry a Mifi with them cus AT&T's coverage sucks.
@ZeRoCo0L Uhhh. Good for you?
@Tenkiyohou Did you try verizon?
@Hydra I have. I've actually tried the big four carriers, I've admittedly never tried Metro PCS. Verizon was great when I lived in San Diego actually but out here closer to the Inland Empire it's not very good. There are a lot of places that I go specifically where Verizon doesn't get coverage. For example, I spend most of the day in Riverside for school at UCR and for work and I wouldn't get coverage inside any of the buildings on campus nor most of the city. Coverage really depends on your area and in mine I get full bars of AT&T everywhere I go. But in this one small set of about three suburban blocks, none of the four carriers get good coverage and everyone is holding onto a landline. Now I've been able to ditch mine and save some money.
@Tenkiyohou Same for me in my entire state. In Florida, AT&T has the best coverage state wide. I let other people use my phone for calling sometimes.
When I get online and hear about AT&T's coverage and data compared to verizon, it's like the opposite here. 3G everywhere on ATT and great speeds.
I'm in Riverside County as well and AT&T wins out here.
@Tenkiyohou
so you're in LA? i guess they've started rolling it out in LA? i'm near el segundo and it's still not available here.
@Tenkiyohou how will you ever order pizza then?!?!
our pizza places will ONLY take landlines
@(Unverified) Then whoever runs your business better get with the program. Verizon and AT&T are losing landline subscriptions at the rate of 10% a year and any self-respecing pizza parlour such as Marcello's on Blaine St. which is family owned so they don't have a ton of money alongside DeMatteo's on Arlington Ave. in Riverside and any Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's I've called do take cell phone orders and not just those, online orders. So frankly, no one here cares that YOUR pizza parlours don't take cell phone orders cuz it's not one that I apparently would call nor one I can locate from all the ones I have. Tough luck.
@Drybones5
Yeah I am in the Santa Barbara area of California, and have never had an issue almost always have full bars, and super fast speeds, Verizon is good here too, but I always have a bar advantage over the Veizon phones. Over halloween the Verizon network crashed in the area I was in (Too many people came into the college town), while AT&T was working like a charm. I think there is some merit to the complaints with AT&T as I have had issues on road trips in the middle of nowhere. But I really think a majority of it is overblown.
@(Unverified)
how would they even know the difference if its a landline or cell number? in the US all carrier are given equal availability to number blocks. there are not "cell phone specific" blocks. furthermore, wlnp/lnp exists.
my cell number is a ported landline number. u can use my phone if u need to, just share a couple slices with me. or change ur pizza place and tell that one to get with the times. but if u dont admit its a cell, idk how they would know. so if someone ported a cell number to their house, i guess theyre screwed from getting pizza from them?
Build them into every new building from now on and maybe ATT will have good coverage...maybe
@hexoDAT64 Actually that wouldn't be a bad idea at all. I've been thinking about that for a while now and it would be cheaper and faster than the years it can take just to set up one cell site. A community can hold those things up indefinitely simply for aesthetic reasons.
@hexoDAT64 When I visit HK a while ago, they put these stuff in the skyscaper elevator shaft. It is nice to know I have bars filled when i go into lift.
Integrate it with the 2Wire ATT Uverse Box. Not charge extra for the box or service, use a separate channel for Cell traffic then my Internet traffic and unlimited calls from home.
Great Idea just change it to a cell phone that gets service. K? Thanks ATT!
Uh, ROLL IT OUT ACROSS THE US!
@MRCUR
Exactly, but substitute every 100,000 of these for one cell tower! Walla! Nationwide excellence!
The problem is not the tech, it's the pricing and policy around it (like needing a GPS lock to work), and the insulting triple dipping on getting paid. They should be paying people deploy these things an shore up their awful service rather then the other way around.
@bushi
You only pay for the hardware you don't pay anything extra for the service unless you want unlimited calling.
@bushi - The issue with that idea is the lack of open access. The only phones that can get on these are the ones you register. And for good reason - I don't want my neighbors using my bandwidth, especially since it's capped.
Now of course you could just mean for personal use like it is, but still, I don't have a problem paying for this so my "good" 3G coverage indoors goes to excellent.
@bushi
Agreed
@bushi you have a point, I would like to see AT&T pay people to do things like this for better service via 3G and reception.
I would ditch my landline for this, but it isn't in my area... :(
Make it be able to share to any iPhone in proximity instead of only having a few registered phones!
For a second, I thought it ask how I would change the *network*. I was about to tee off on my keyboard.
I still don't get it.
ATT wants me to use my cell phone all the time. But their network is not good enough to provide good signal in my house, but they don;t want to fix the network..
Instead, they want me to pay money for a device that compensates for their network shortcoming, and connect that device to my broadband network that I pay for, all this so they can charge me for calls I make on equipment that I paid for, over a network that I pay for..
I DON'T GET IT..
@ArieArie They sell crippled iphones to people as well, they don't expect those that "get it" to actually buy this product
@ArieArie
In my case, I'm in a valley. There are 2 towers with in 1/2 mile of my house, and coverage is still spotty.
I think the Microcell is the perfect solution for people like me and the thousand of others in San Dieigo and locations with similar terrain.
@ArieArie - I totally agree. If you are in mountainous terrain and a cell tower nearby won't suffice then this solution is great. But for other scenarios; it should be provided for free or you should be let out of your contract without penalty.
If this is more out of convenience rather than necessity, then yes - you should have to pay for the device. But let's face it most people who will get this device *need* it for in-home coverage.
I used to be with AT&T, but had to go BigRed - I was with AT&T when it was Suncom, then to Cingular, then to AT&T. Then i moved into a home where i just could not have a functional phone in the house. I had to go outside to use the darn thing. After having my phone traced for several days by AT&T, they let me out of my contract without penalty. With this device, it would seem that it would benefit them to offer it as a free solution to a custom to retain their business rather than simply let them out of the contract.
@YourNameHere
I live smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, a very densely populated area.. ATT should have no excuse to have poor reception where I live. there are still spots on the main highways in the valley where your call gets dropped..
I'm just surprised that people have to pay for a monthly fee when AT&T is using YOUR internet connection. Does the box at least come free?
@Jeff Kibuule there is no monthly fee.
@gianpo But then the device is $140 [plus tax]
it should be free with the purchase of the box...
and the box should be no more than $50!!!
@Hawon It is free with the purchase of the box.
It should NOT drop calls! When the signal is strong, it works great, but the signal strength fluctuates a lot. I feel like its only marginally better than the shitty reception that I already had. If I had to pay a monthly fee then I return it in a heartbeat, but since it was a one-time cost then I think I'll hold on to it for a bit.
I think everything I would change about it has been summed up by most of the comments here. I might (MIGHT) be okay with them charging for the hardware if there was no monthly fee associated with the device for unlimited calling. Plus I think they're marketing this all wrong, they need more Wilson's. Like 50 of them. Talking at once. It'll be a cacophony of Mike Judge and Wes Anderson quotes about how fantastic this thing is.
@Sarcasm
if you get at&ts Unlimited plan there is no extra fee for unlimited minutes
I would actually prefer if they charged about $50 for the box and technical support while all usage would be free... This thing does not make any sense to me... 1) I pay for cellular coverage and because it's weak at a particular location, I'm going to purchase and pay for a box to make ATT profit bigger...
Mannnn.....