Thoughts on the AT&T Microcell

(that's not Kelly's microcell, it's just a hotlinked picture)

At my old house in Youngsville the cellular phone coverage was less than stellar (seemingly for all cell phone providers). AT&T seemed to perform slightly better than Verizon in the back reaches of Franklin County but that wasn't saying much. Kelly recently purchased an iPhone 3Gs and she loves the phone but the coverage was lacking as it always had been. If you stood perfectly still in the master bedroom you could reliably connect a call but isn't mobility the point of having a cell phone?

Enter the AT&T Microcell. Essentially a microcell is a 3G cell "tower" made by Cisco intended to be installed in AT&T customer homes. The microcell connects to your existing Internet connection and when connected your AT&T phone talks to the microcell which routes the traffic from G3 to IP (over your Internet connection) and sends the call across the Internet to an AT&T facility where it is processed in much the same way that "normal" cell connection is processed.

So, how does it work? Turns out pretty darn well. Kelly called to let me know she had picked up a microcell from the AT&T store. When she got home she connected the microcell to an existing Linksys switch located directly downstream from the firewall (in this case a Soekris Net4501 running M0nowall if anyone cares). The device flashed a couple lights and that was about it initially. The installation document said the next phase of the installation would take about 10 minutes and if all went well the device would be ready to use in about 90 minutes.

90 minutes later Kelly called, she had full 5 bars of 3g connectivity and the voice quality was crystal clear. But this was next to the microcell itself so a high quality connection was expected. Kelly then wandered around the house, yard, into the street, in fact all the way to the back fence all the time with at least four bars of 3g connectivity except for one isolated incident when she dropped down to two bars and her voice broke up, but only momentarily. She later went back to the same spot with no negative effect on voice quality.

In short, the microcell rocks! But I have many questions and I'm going to do have to do some troubleshooting in order to find out, and I hope to do this next week. First and foremost what devices are on the back end of the conversation? Is the data between the microcell and the backend device encrypted? Does the microcell support IPv6? Does a persistent connection exist between the microcell and AT&T back end equipment? It seems there would have to be. Otherwise in a true "dead zone" how would an incoming call connect and the phone ring? The microcell is behind a firewall (of course) so it's not like the AT&T back end devices could reach out and initiate a connection therefore a persistent connection must exist. Right?

So far, from the single test, what I can say is the microcell rocks. Even though I have superior connectivity at my place in Durham I may end up purchasing one for myself just to tinker and toy with the device, see what makes it tick, etc. I'll keep you all posted.