AT&T Cell Phone Booster

I am on move always and stays in remote areas but most of the places have good WiFi connection and very poor cell connectivity. Is AT&T 4G Cell Phone Booster can be used anywhere with a active WiFi connection in the United States?

AT&t's cell phone booster is in fact not a booster. It is a microCell that works with voiceover LTE much like AT&t's previous microcells. It requires a wired home internet connection and at&t postpaid service to register the device.  And while you can take it with you and connect it to another wired internet service, it is not generally considered very portable compared to just using Wi-Fi calling.

I need Cell Calls more than WiFi Calls due to privacy reasons.

 🤔   Ummm   There is literally no difference. Whether the call is made with the assistance of a wired internet connection via microcell, wifi calling, or strictly over cellular, your call is still private.  

I don't know what you think is happening over Wi-Fi, but there's nothing that happens over Wi-Fi that could not happen over cellular.  For example if the FBI has a subpoena to listen, they are listening no matter how your calls connect 🤣

Wifi calling by AT&T is the preferred method of making, receiving calls and texts. Every time you move and activate a cell booster, you have to re-register it so that E-911 calls can be made with accuracy in an emergency. Not all locations, addresses and roads are present in the E-911 databases.

Not all areas are supported by cell booster service. If the local cell tower supports a couple or more bars of native cellular service, you may not be able to activate a booster at all.

If the majority areas you visit have decent wifi access, stick with that as it will be much more reliable. I find that cell booster services work best where there is reliable, hard wired ethernet over landline services and less than 2~1 bar of 4G LTE available from a local tower.

Indeed! As Formallyknownas stated, wifi calling is secured and encryption tunneled same as use over the femptocell/cell booster and regular cellular service. Any which level of service you use as a "person of interest"? Gov't oversight may occur. Keep your nose clean, as they say. No one particular level or style of service really is any more secure than the other.

@wolfox 

Lol ... I'm always tempted to ask, "what is so interesting about you or your communication that you think somebody is listening?".  If you have done something to attract the interest and attention of the US government, They have a particular set of skills, and they will find you

🤣

@formerlyknownas @wolfox Thank you guys! Ever since my home WiFi got hacked by a scammer I don't trust that, I work as a geology scientist for National Park Service, so you can guess I am in remote areas doing my research and I don't want anyone to steal my research by hacking the WiFi I am using. I thought AT&T Cell Booster will be much secure way of communicating. But seems like it's not.

No. Choose a mix of upper, lower case and numeric "phrases" to secure your wifi. This is a topic worth all it's own thread away from here.

But as an example? A good wifi password using WPA-2 or WPA-3 AES encryption can be anything that doesn't contain consecutive numbers or a single dictionary based word.

I.e. "N0bond.Idon'texpectyoutotalk.1expectj002d1e!"

Etc.

Use of outdated hardware that can't at least sort WPA-2 passphrases above WEP will leave you vulnerable.

@wolfox  agreed, and excellent advice.

Although, home Wi-Fi is not usually easily hackable even with a simple password. And I think proximity is required.  

    What evidence do you have that your home Wi-Fi was accessed/hacked?

  There's absolutely no doubt that using public Wi-Fi to connect your device puts data that is on the phone at risk, but the person who's trying to access your data would have to be connected to the same Wi-Fi connection at the time.

Calls are not the concern. It's accessing physical data.  And I hope you have your email secured I'm assuming you do. The most common way of hacking into a mobile device is accessing the account that was used to set up the device. So that means an iCloud account or Apple ID, or a Google account or Samsung account.

And then make sure any data that you have on your devices is secured with password files.

@formallyknownas

Hate to sound like a mimeograph machine, but... ditto!

@WirelessCustomer123 

No matter which way you use the phone to call and message, your communications are going to be locked up tight. This is just a function of communications via cellular itself. It's baked in and needs no second thought.

Your browsing, downloading, uploading, etc. can be eavesdropped on via wifi if it's an open, public, unencrypted and non-password secured access point. It's subject to all sorts of foolery of the equipment in use at home or office if it's dated enough or not configured to support the latest encryption and password protocols. If you can control wifi deployment in the environments you work and live in?

Pick up some upgrades or ask admin to upgrade/ update and at least flip the switch on complex passwords and at least WPA-2 wireless encryption. You can also sleep better at night again.

Edit: To clarify, even if your only connection is unsecured wifi? Texts and calls made or received by your device pass through an encrypted VPN directly to AT&T mobility services. They are not subject at all to casual interception.

@WirelessCustomer123  If you work for the Forest Service in remote locations what kind of internet connection do you have? WiFi has nothing to do with AT&T's femtocell (Cell Booster) so you need to have a wired internet connection (DSL, cable, or fiber) for the Cell Booster to work.

The Cell Booster is designed to be moved from location to location (from home to a summer home for example) but the MINIMUM requirement is a post paid AT&T cellular account and a WIRED internet service. Wireless internet is not supported.