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AT&T MicroCell brings more bars, but at a cost
Sadly, I'm one of the poor souls who has close to zero cell coverage in my house. It's partly the way my home is constructed, and partly because the city fathers in the area I live in are going real slow about approving new cell towers. The result is that I usually have one bar displayed on my iPhone, but as soon as I try to make a call, that bar disappears and I wind up in cell phone hell. AT&T has an answer, but it is a bit pricey. It's called the AT&T 3G MicroCell. It's not a cellphone repeater, but instead a device that plugs into your router and then gets you voice and data just as if you have a cell tower in your house. It gives me five bars anywhere in the house and yard, which pretty much completely solves my reception issues. [It may not work for you; TJ points out that AT&T doesn't support the MicroCell over satellite connections. –Ed.] We had a runthrough of the MicroCell when guest blogger Murphy Mac put it through its paces in 2009; my take on the device follows here. Read on!
AT&T announces expanded availability of 3G MicroCell
It may not be the news that folks in some particularly problematic areas have been waiting for, but AT&T has now announced that it's finally expanded availability of its 3G MicroCell beyond its initial testbed cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. The new markets apparently include some additional areas of North Carolina, along with new parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and San Diego, plus the addition of Las Vegas -- the only entirely-new market of the bunch. Hit up the link below to punch in your zipcode for exact availability, and all the necessary details to get "five bars in your own home." And if you're curious about exactly what this whole femtocell thing is about, be sure to check out our impressions of the device. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
AT&T's 3G MicroCell still on track for release sometime before the end of the year
We've known the tech behind AT&T's spin on the home-based femtocell repeater since January, and in February a little iPhone update revealed that we were getting closer to prime time. Finally, news of limited trials and then... silence. AT&T has apparently been keeping its head down, diligently testing its MicroCell service, with 200 lucky subscribers having Cisco boxes beam full bars to the darkest corners of their living rooms for months, testing that has been successful enough for AT&T's Gordon Mansfield to say that it's still "on track for a full national launch." That's the good news. The bad news is that he continued by saying it'll release sometime "by the end of 2009." So, you might be in for up to six more months of dangling your iPhone out the window to get your voicemail, but hold tough -- you can make it.
