For those who missed the torrent of
3G MicroCell news yesterday, here's the long and short of it: the Cisco-built device is now on sale, but
only in Charlotte, North Carolina. One fortunate Charlottean managed to scoop one up, but rather than keeping the experience to himself, he decided to bang out a full review for the rest of the world to see. By and large, Jason's experience with the femtocell mirrored our own with Sprint's
AIRAVE. Installation and setup was a breeze, and once it was booted up and operational, it worked like a charm. Before picking this up, he was seeing one bar of EDGE (if he was lucky); afterwards, his entire house was blanketed with five bars of 3G. Not surprisingly, he noted that the before and after difference when fielding calls was "night and day," but he
did take the opportunity to bark at the lofty $150 price tag. But hey, those desperate enough will cough up anything to actually use their phone, right?
posted Sep 22nd 2009 12:08PM
are these things safe or am i going to nuke myself with it.
Great, so the "real" cost of the iPhone 3G just went up again, because here in San Diego At&t is about as useful as a "hole in the head." What a joke. I'll stick with t-mobile until Apple gets it right and shares iPhone with the rest of the world.
I don't know where in San Diego you're talking about, but I was just there a couple of months ago and I had awesome 3G coverage! I went up and down the beaches, I was at the NAVY Sub base... I don't think I was on EDGE at all. And I did a few speed tests and I was getting 1mb-1.5mb while I was there for the weekend. Maybe you're in a bad spot. lol
I live in a complete dead zone for every carrier except a crummy regional one. I will be in line when they release these things nationally.
From being in Charlotte, we actually call ourselves Charlottean
I have two Wireless N routers in my house, will this shoot signal farther? My WiFi would be faster, but N only shoots 1500 feet. I like to listen to Pandora while mowing my 4 acres and the WiFi doesn't reach!
@Scott
I've lived in San Diego my entire life, and the only time At&t was decent was when they were Cingular. I live in La Jolla but my friends ALL OVER San Diego do not get reception in their homes using At&t. Glad it worked out for you, but try living here for 25 years and then you can make a better assessment of which providers excel in this area. Verizon tops the list, then t-mobile, then sprint, then At&t. Nextel works great as well.
Phone companies charging you for their inadequacy in network infrastructure. Hell why build towers at all now? If a customer is complaining about QoS in their area it is now because they didn't have the money to buy all the "proper" equipment.
Almost as Ugly and Scary as the service itself. Interesting.....
I'm going to give this one to Gizmodo. You already pay one bill for wireless service. You should not have to pay MORE and/or buy MORE equipment to be able to use that service.
Does anyone know if these will work outside of the Charlotte area? The AT&T web pages say that it's ok to give them to someone else and for the new owner to use the femtocell in other places as long as these places are "areas where AT&T is licensed to offer service." Does that mean it would work in New York, where I live? Anyone want to send me one? I'd pay triple to be able to make a phone call up here!
This device contains a GPS chip that must aquire a siginal to verrify that it is in a licenced ATT area before it will work.. or you could save the 150.00 and 20.00 per month and use that to get a Verizon/ATT capable iphone in 2010. Verizon's network is slower even there 3g is slower than ATT 2.5G but id rather it be slower and work than faster and choppy