Completing a
phased roll-out that kicked off back in April, AT&T has finally gotten around to launching its
3G MicroCell in all of its markets, giving the entire customer base some flexibility when "more bars in more places" doesn't happen to include
your place. Interestingly, the announcement was made in passing during comments by AT&T director Gordon Mansfield at the Femtocells World Summit in London this week, where he spent much of his time trying to quell a minor furor over the carrier's continued application of data caps when using the MicroCell. He makes some pretty strong arguments: even though all MicroCell voice and data traffic starts off traveling over your own internet connection, it ultimately ends up within AT&T's core infrastructure -- and a legal requirement that the carrier be able to intercept traffic for law enforcement use prevents it from diverting that traffic elsewhere. More importantly, though, if you're within range of a MicroCell, odds are very good that you're also within range of a WiFi connection -- and since all of AT&T's data-heavy handsets offer WiFi, the whole complaint is kinda moot. So just get one if you need one and don't worry about it, okay?
posted June 22nd 2010 2:53PM
Just picked one of these up yesterday. 5 bars everywhere in the house, voice quality is great. Setup is easy and it doesn't actually need to be near a window (a very weak GPS signal will work). Downside, it still uses minutes unless you want to pay $20 month.
AT&T 3G Microcell: When you absolutely, positively need a signal for a service you're paying for but not getting in the first place.
I picked this up last night. Let me cut to the chase, It's a POS. I have a screen capture of a call failed, with full bars whilst connected to the microcell. It did give me full bars in my dead zone of a house but they are not stable and I still get tinny and robot sounding voices. Oh and not to mention pathetic 3G speeds. It was easy to setup but the fun stopped there. Decent looking product but obviously that's not what I dropped a hundy fiddy for. I'll be returning her today.
I also spoke to an AT&T rep yesterday about the white iPhone 4 and he said it will arrive on July 14th.
I bought one of these a week or two ago when I figured out they were released in Denver (I signed up to be notified, but didn't receive an email).
I think part of the reason AT&T isn't releasing the thing with major fanfare is that for customers like me, it's almost a bigger nightmare than iPhone reception.
My first unit didn't set itself up properly and ended up preventing me from making calls while the thing was on. For support, I had to have a tier 2 technician call me back which they apparently do in their own sweet time (I waited several days with no call back).
Finally, I ended up replacing the Microcell with one that registered (after AT&T's broken activation site came back up), but now I occasionally get dropped calls still, and the voice quality varies from excellent to completely robotic.
I'm not sure I can really recommend the unit to anyone. It's a nice idea, but you have to remember that AT&T runs the show, so expect quality issues, server downtime and plenty of screw ups.