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The AT&T 3G MicroCell Owner's Thread

I would return the Mcell but at this point - I received credits to my account that made it free. So I might as well keep it and see what happens.

I hope AT&T and Apple can figure it out. I think it's an iPhone 4 issue just as much as Mcell. More of an Mcell issue since my dumb phones in the house also experience dropped calls and distortion as well.
 
My replacement M-Cell is worse than the original. Now both my wife and my 3GS running iOS4 have problems locking on. My wife has been home from work for two hours and still hasn't picked up the M-Cell. The ATT tech working my case is due to call me on Wednesday. I plan to tell him I'm returning the device and canceling the service. I'll see what he says. Maybe I'll get enough credit to cover the cost and hope it gets better. Maybe I'll just bag the whole thing.
 
If there is ANY signal from the towers, it takes a while before the phones will lock on to the Mcell unless you are right near it and/or go into airplane mode and come back out.
 
AbSoluTc said:
If there is ANY signal from the towers, it takes a while before the phones will lock on to the Mcell unless you are right near it and/or go into airplane mode and come back out.
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My wife's phone has gone down to two bars, sitting in a dead zone in our house, and still won't lock on. Sometimes when I try Airplane Mode on/off it will lock on and then blink off again soon thereafter. Besides, my wife isn't going to learn to go into settings to toggle Airplane Mode all the time. She just wants the damn thing to work without thinking about it, like it's supposed to. This is a POS.
 
RaceTripper said:
My wife's phone has gone down to two bars, sitting in a dead zone in our house, and still won't lock on. Sometimes when I try Airplane Mode on/off it will lock on and then blink off again soon thereafter. Besides, my wife isn't going to learn to go into settings to toggle Airplane Mode all the time. She just wants the damn thing to work without thinking about it, like it's supposed to. This is a POS.
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What do you mean "blink off"? Details are very important here. I also would not expect anyone to have to use the airplane mode every single time. No way. It should work.

What I am trying to figure out is if your signal throughout the house is DEAD/NO SERVICE or do you get service (if so, how much?). Turn off the phone, stand near the Mcell, turn it back on and see if it locks with 5 bars. Then move to a location where you have TOWER service and see what happens.
 
AbSoluTc said:
What do you mean "blink off"? Details are very important here. I also would not expect anyone to have to use the airplane mode every single time. No way. It should work.
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Blinks off, meaning I see "M-Cell" in the iPhone display one second and it's gone the next. I got this thing because I can't ever start a call anywhere in my house and finish it reliably before it drops due to low bars connection. Our phones should be attaching and staying on the M-Cell, period. This shouldn't be rocket science. Like I said, the whole thing is a POS.
 
RaceTripper said:
Blinks off, meaning I see "M-Cell" in the iPhone display one second and it's gone the next. I got this thing because I can't ever start a call anywhere in my house and finish it reliably before it drops due to low bars connection. Our phones should be attaching and staying on the M-Cell, period. This shouldn't be rocket science. Like I said, the whole thing is a POS.
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I understand your frustrations. Is there a location in the house where you get NO SERVICE on the phone? Literally, NOTHING. Either SEARCHING or NO SERVICE shows up on the screen?
 
AbSoluTc said:
I understand your frustrations. Is there a location in the house where you get NO SERVICE on the phone? Literally, NOTHING. Either SEARCHING or NO SERVICE shows up on the screen?
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I understand you may be trying to be helpful, but is there a point this line of questioning? This should work, and it doesn't. AT&T tech support hasn't helped, so I'm giving up on it.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes and no. It depends. On what I don't know. My service in the house is unreliable and inconsistent. Sometimes I get no bars, or searching, or 5 bars in one place, sometimes in another. Sometimes it starts one way and switches while I talk, dropping calls in the process. I was hoping the M-Cell would be the answer so I could get rid of my overpriced land line. Apparently not.

This is more than frustration. This is paying for something that doesn't work as advertised.
 
Add me way down in South Texas to the list of people with micro-cell issues, bought one last week and it was working flawlessly with my iPhone 3GS (ios4) my wife's 3G (3.1.3) and my son's LG flip phone.

Then suddenly today no outbound calls and very spotty inbound calls and voicemails. Reset M-cell and reset network connections/rebooted iPhones and now the m-cell is working better on the Wife's 3G but not at all on my GS or the LG flip phone.

Funny thing is her iPhone 3G requires you enter the area codes to connect to local numbers where none were needed before.

Trying connect to 3G data network on my 3gs gives an error: "unable to initialize data network" --was getting ~1 mbit down and ~55kbits up just days ago.

This is got to be a network issue, but its been going on all day.
 
AbSoluTc said:
It sucks doesn't it? I swear it's the towers trying to take over my phone while it's connected to the Mcell. Not sure what can prevent that though. :(

There are threads over on Apple forums, AT&T forums and here with people having the same problems.



I hear it will hand off if you are leaving but not hand off coming back.
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ATT engineering is going to call me on thursday the 15th to do a call trace to track exactly what is happening and hopefully find a solution. Again, none of my other phones have any issue with the M-cell.
 
audiomixer said:
ATT engineering is going to call me on thursday the 15th to do a call trace to track exactly what is happening and hopefully find a solution. Again, none of my other phones have any issue with the M-cell.
Click to expand...

I hope you get a resolution. Let us know what happens. :)
 
Got it working by unregistering and re-registering the microcell at ATT.com.

Its now working pretty good but this thing is buggy-- i was on a call today and a 2nd call came in -- the audio on the 1st call immediately turned to a high pitched squeal. I hung up both calls, called back and was able to get a 3-way call going without any problems.. :confused::confused:
 
i can get mms pics to go thru if i take the pic with my camera but its painfully slow, but if i try to send a screen capture it fails each and every time. but if im on normal 3g it works just fine.. wtf?

hmm just ran a speedtest, appears upload is now capped @ 56kbps, non-microcell i get 96kbps.. ok wtf?

just disabled 3g and put it in edge mode, screen captures send just fine, put it back on 3g-microcell and it fails
 
Microcell keeps cutting out / flashing 3G

I got my microcell yesterday and everything set up fine, I got the text that it was ready to go and it worked for 5 minutes and then the 3G light started flashing again. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it started working again for 10 minutes and cut out and started flashing. I moved it to another location in my house connected directly to my router (before it was hooked up to my airport which was hooked up to the router). It started working better and I used it for an hour or so, I went to bed and this morning it was flashing again! Anyone else having this issue where the 3G keeps cutting out and flashing
 
Help with install: Lynksys BEFSR41 and MC

Has anyone activated the MC with a BEFSR41? Mine does not seem to work and AT&T techie did not know the router. Are there instructions for this particular set up? The set up page on my MAC does not seem to have all the right "buttons." Any help?
 
Got my MicroCell today and it works great with my iPhone 4. They only thing I'm having an issue with is that every time I try to go to my Facebook app it tries to load and then just kicks me out to my home screen. Has anyone else had any similar issues? Like I said everything else works great and I love it just can't figure out this Facebook deal. Any help is appreciated.
 
cpt4599 said:
Got my MicroCell today and it works great with my iPhone 4. They only thing I'm having an issue with is that every time I try to go to my Facebook app it tries to load and then just kicks me out to my home screen. Has anyone else had any similar issues? Like I said everything else works great and I love it just can't figure out this Facebook deal. Any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...

I also just got my mcell today, and I'm having the same issue with Facebook as you've described.
 
jayman30 said:
Add me way down in South Texas to the list of people with micro-cell issues, bought one last week and it was working flawlessly with my iPhone 3GS (ios4) my wife's 3G (3.1.3) and my son's LG flip phone.

Then suddenly today no outbound calls and very spotty inbound calls and voicemails. Reset M-cell and reset network connections/rebooted iPhones and now the m-cell is working better on the Wife's 3G but not at all on my GS or the LG flip phone.

Funny thing is her iPhone 3G requires you enter the area codes to connect to local numbers where none were needed before.

Trying connect to 3G data network on my 3gs gives an error: "unable to initialize data network" --was getting ~1 mbit down and ~55kbits up just days ago.

This is got to be a network issue, but its been going on all day.
Click to expand...

Where in S Texas? I'm in Corpus Christi and having issues that have just been getting worse. We are dropping calls even though it says we have 5 bars, people on the other end can't understand us, huge delays, we can't understand the other people, etc. I feel like I wasted $150 on this thing!
 
I finally just unplugged my Microcell, I love the thing, but when I am on phone calls I start getting voice drop outs and crap, I don't have "horrible" service at my house, so really having the damn thing unplugged works better. I wouldn't mind, but I still haven't got my rebate cards, so I am still out $150 for the thing.
 
I picked up a MicroCell yesterday. Brought it home, got it all setup in a half an hour and then in an hour I received a constant signal and it has worked since.

No issues with calls echoing or any other problems. I get perfect 5 bars in all of my townhouse apartment. I am very pleased. It sucks I had to shell out $150 but for a guaranteed 5 bar constant connection for voice calls for my girlfriend and I. It's well worth it.

After reading about many problems with the MicroCell I was a bit nervous purchasing it but it comes with a 30 day return policy so saw no reason not to try it. Glad I did.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

I got mine yesterday, & it's working perfectly. I had some initial issues with Facebook, but then I found out the problem was on Facebook's end. I haven't had any issues with voice quality, calls dropping, texts going through, etc. Working like a charm.

I had NO service at my house until the MicroCell. I encourage everyone to pick up one & at least give it a shot.

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