Bought a AT&T Microcell today

[grohl]

I live in the Dallas area. I have a two story home with plenty of decent AT&T service around the house, but miserable on the inside, bottom floor.

I haven't set it up yet, so I will follow this post up with my mini-review.

I have read lots of positive information about this product on the tech blogs. Anyone else tried it yet? I'm excited to have 5 bars in my own home.

 

[zerocool84]

Sucks that you have to buy something extra to get crappy AT&T coverage in your own home.

 

[Brian Klug]

We've had our review up for some time now: http://anandtech.com/show/3626/att-3g-microcell-a-comprehensive-exploration

And I had the pleasure of talking with a Cisco product manager about the microcell product as a whole. The only real issue is that handout issue I talk about in the article. There was about a day of random downtime in my state (I guess it was indeed a statewide issue) but since then, everything has been great. Having the microcell is invaluable if you're dropping calls in your house, though the range depends on how good/bad signal is there already, and you need GPS fix.

 

[SunnyD]

Sucks that you have to buy something extra to get crappy AT&T coverage in your own home.

And pay AT&T for a service that basically freeloads on your broadband connection.

 

[grohl]

I read that review and review on Gizmodo, also in Dallas Morning News.

Like it or not, I am stuck with the house I live in, and I have AT&T since dropping Sprint for their terrible coverage in Dallas. We live in a newly constructed 2 story home and on the middle part of the bottom story coverage is spotty. I don't really blame AT&T for this. I mean, coverage around/outside my house is fine. I accept that my home's design or construction or whatever is responsible for this dead zone.

The setup is easy. Plug and play, near a window. It took about 40 minutes (manual says up to 90) to initialize and establish connection. I went from no service or one bar to 4 bars in my dead zone. I have made about a dozen calls starting on the Microcell network (phone tells you when connected) with one bad handoff since leaving my house.

So far, so good. I'm out $150, since I upgrade to whatever free phone I can get every two years, I'm ok with that.

 

[JS80]

Don't they have wimax in dallas? http://www.texasclear.com/

oh nm microcell improves cell signal. gotcha.