I really hate to have this subject as my 2009 theme, but this was too good.
enough said...
Results tagged “coverage” from technolosophy
A femtocell (AT&T's is pictured left) is a mini cell tower you connect to your broadband internet to extend the cellular signal of your cell carrier via your broadband connection. The device installs like a typical WiFi router would and increases the cellular coverage in dead or over-subscribed areas where normal cell service is failing or unavailable. The range of a femtocell is small and while your phone sees no difference between a femtocell and the big cell towers atop buildings, femtocells are usually setup to allow only 5 to 10 pre-specified phones to connect at a time and in AT&Ts case can only offer 3G speeds if your Internet connection is fast enough to support it (3.5Mbps).The recent pilot program to test AT&Ts femtocells in Charlotte, North Carolina raises some interesting question as to how the company is going to deploy and use femtocells to address widespread and well documented service failures in New York, San Fransisco and other major metro areas where the wild success of the iPhone has caused over subscription and saturation of the cell towers. The result of which is 20-30% of iPhone calls result in a dropped or fail connection NYC. Things have gotten so bad on AT&T that my girlfriend went out and got a second Verizon based phone just for work calls, forwarded her iPhone to it and now takes calls on this crappy little LG phone, that is how much her AT&T calls were dropping.
In the Charlotte femtocell pilot program AT&T has set the cost at a onetime (and in my opinion outrageous) $150 hardware fee. With the option of paying an additional $20 monthly to make unlimited calls via the femtocell you install and supply the backhaul internet connection for. If you choose not to add the unlimited femtocell calling plan then all calls (femtocell based or not) use minutes from your std plan just as it would normally.
Just to clarify, I live in the middle of Manhattan, not on the side of a mountain upstate and I don't know about you, but when I last checked AT&T's coverage map, the West Village was square in the middle. To think AT&T is suggesting I pay an additional $150 to provide me the coverage they promised me when I signed up just because they can't keep up with demand is outrageous.
I expect AT&T to give any user, within a coverage area that is known to be experiencing over subscription and network capacity problems, a FREE femtocell upon request. I also want a discount on my AT&T bill every month to offset the cost of the high-speed broadband connection I will have to provide to use the femtocell.
Or AT&T can sit back and watch as we all switch to a different carrier the moment they offer the iPhone. Wake up AT&T, we are not with you cuase of brand loyatly or your outstanding service, we are with you because we had no choice, it is Apple we love, NOT AT&T and unless you do something about your troublesome network we will dump you as soon as the opportunity arises. Did you really think your network services are anything other than a replaceable commodity AT&T?
Continue reading New Yorkers Deserve Free AT&T Femtocells.
Over the past month our AT&T 3G cellular coverage here in New York City has been horrendous and getting worse all the time.1) Dropped calls despite full bars
2) Failed calls despite full bars
3) Spotty 3G coverage despite full bars
Something is not right here... maybe time to roll out that femtocell strategy in earnest AT&T, cause things are getting ugly. So ugly in fact, my girlfriend went out and purchased a cheap LG Verizon phone with a 2 year contract for her business calls since her iPhone reception was becoming too unreliable.
To be fair I would say that I only encounter issues 20% of the time, but I used to have no issues at all.
"Houston, AT&T has a problem"
Relevant links:
* It's time for a new iPhone PR strategy at AT&T
* AT&T reportedly nearing femtocell 'soft launch'
Continue reading What is going on with AT&T coverage in NYC.