Tutor
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3 Messages
HELP - 3G light is flashing, microcell was previously working fine
Hello,
I figured it was worth posting here so I have yet to have success with anything else.
Background
I live in an area almost exactly inbetween three AT&T cell phone towers, so subsequently my phone is constantly switching singnals from one tower to the other giving me very inconsistent service. After diagnosing the problem with AT&T about six months ago they sent me a micro cell free of charge, and it worked absolutely fantastic until....
The Problem
About a week ago my microcell's 3g light started flashing, this had happened once or twice before so I performed a simple reset but it did not fix the problem like before.
- I tried resetting my modem, router, and microcell
- hard resetting my microcell for 30 seconds
- de-activing and re-activating my microcell twice
- checking my power cord to make sure it was the right voltage
- getting a replacement microcell sent to my house
- setting up my microcell in the alternate arrangement (modem-->microcell-->router)
- updating the firmware on my router
and none of these fixed the problems.
My current internet is about 30mbps DL and 10mbps upload so that isn't the problem
The ports on my router are all opened, and nothing has changed to effect that
After going extensively through the forums I am kind of at a loss of what to try next. Any suggestions from people on the forums?
I am currently located in the East Bay of California (Alameda, CA)
Thanks very much.
-Frogis
Avedis53
Professor
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2.2K Messages
9 years ago
This discussion makes me appreciate having cable internet. Simpler, faster and far fewer problems....
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OkieSaytar
Mentor
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51 Messages
9 years ago
AMEN.....................I remember my days tracing down noise, shorts, hum, on comm consoles, control at that time was tone control. They used tones down at about -20 dbm (somewhere in there been awhile...) the lines were dedicated, no other equipment on them but the comm consoles. You wanted a 0 dbm on the line which is what Ma Bell promised...............If you started getting any noise or humm(high impedence short) you would get voice OK, but you would lose your control tones (who were being pushed down to the -35-55 dbm level)......Nothing like a dispatcher making an emergency dispatch.....and finding out nobody heard them (repeater failed to key up)...........................
Like Otto? Ave? I like to insure that when I call them out, that the issue is NOT on my end. Also if you rewire use good quality wire, waterproof any connections exposed to elements...and...don't run any of the wire near and especially NOT parallel to AC lines (read don't pull them down inside the walls and out with the AC plugs), the induced electrical fields will murder your line quality. If you must go near AC lines try to keep a good distance from the lines and if you do get near try to cross the lines perpendicular to the AC....it will minimize the induced fields some.......
They don't do is so often now, but eons ago Ma Bell used to slap the demarc's on the AC riser going into the house..(before digital equipment in comsumer equip) cheaper and easier, let the power company do the poles and just tag along.
Hopefully some are not still doing this...........
I love our fiber (which carrys our phone service too)......2yrs + now and NO phone problems, no more slow internet or bad internet problems (except MCell its special).........knock on wood.
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OttoPylot
ACE - Expert
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20.2K Messages
9 years ago
I knew you'd say that
I just consider myself fortunate to have an independent ISP (one of the highest rated in the country) with phenonmenal customer service (for the few times I've had to call them), being so close to the CO, paying $50 per month, including taxes and my old AT&T landline, for sustained 17Mbps speeds, and being in the perfect geographical location to get trouble-free OTA HDTV. Everything else I need I can stream or use HBO Go. Not for everyone, and there are some things I wish I could get but no ever escalating costs or any of that other nonsense that sometimes comes with pay tv. My son got Comcrap when he moved out to go to graduate school and they have been a frickin' nightmare. But, back to the topic at hand......
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guitargain
Scholar
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187 Messages
9 years ago
Thanks for the input as I have learned a lot over the years on forums like these and it's still how I learn. I don't have perfect OTA TV but close and I also stream Netflix, Hulu, and use playon as well. We watch more tv now than we did when we had an 80 bucks a month dishnetwork account.
I can't complain about my independant ISP either. I pay about 85 bucks a month for the phone package with the 6 meg dsl plan. With my company though you have to have a pot in order to get their dsl and I almost wish it wasn't that way.
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OttoPylot
ACE - Expert
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20.2K Messages
9 years ago
Yeah. For years, like a lot of people, we had AT&T (PacBell originally) as our phone service. When we got DSL, we had to run it over the active POTS line. No biggee. Then our ISP took over control and maintenance of the POTS line from AT&T so that's when our landline was rolled into our internet and it's been perfect.
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guitargain
Scholar
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187 Messages
9 years ago
I will say that after taking that extra filter out my consistency of service is better. I can pass the voipqualitytest.com testing now over 50% of the time when before it was barely passing around 20% of the time. So although I may never get it great I believe by doing a multi pronged attack WILL make it much better than it was when I started. I also went out yesterday and took a closer look at the demarc and what I had going into the house and realized that I had neglected to unwire a jack that I wasn't using anymore so it was essentially wired on the demarc but going to a jack that has nothing plugged into and I never use it anyway so I unwired it from the demarc. Little improvements here and there and maybe eventually it will be pretty good. Intending on doing the rewire on Tuesday so will report back results after that. Not sure when the phone guy will replace the demarc and have the splitter ready to go but until then I am going to wire the phone lines (2) and attach them to the customer side of the demarc and I will bring the dsl straight off the phone company side so it's essentially split without a splitter until I get the actual splitter.
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OttoPylot
ACE - Expert
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20.2K Messages
9 years ago
Good info. It's unfortunate that you have to go thru all of that work but being in a rural area, it appears to be necessary. I did all of that only because I wanted the most stable dialup internet connetion possible and didn't even consider VoIP (which I didn't even know about at the time). Years later, I'm glad I did. Post back when you have new info.
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guitargain
Scholar
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187 Messages
9 years ago
I am in the middle of a 48 hour shift and not at home right now, but I talked to my wife earlier and the MC had the flashing green 3g light and recovered on it's own with the reconnect. I am thinking that there is a problem on AT&Ts end somewhere but in my case these intermittent drops could be from my consistency of service problem.
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Avedis53
Professor
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2.2K Messages
9 years ago
It's really hard to say what causes the Mcell to drop its connection and then re-establish the connection on its own. I see this from time to time also. I would suspect that something happened on the ISP side to temporarily break communications between the Mcell and the AT&T servers. Once the cause of that break cleared up, the Mcell was able to reconnect without the need to power cycle the unit. I would lean towards an ISP problem as opposed to an AT&T problem but who's to say?
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guitargain
Scholar
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187 Messages
9 years ago
I would tend to agree, but the hard part is we will never know for sure. It's very frustrating because there are so many variables and you never seem to really KNOW what happened to cause it and the same when it starts working. Mine worked fine for over two years with hardly any problems and I am sure that there could be things that degraded or maybe something changed at the phone company in the system. But I still go back and say that there are just too many people having these problems in different parts of the country that seem to have started at the same time, that is what makes me think something changed on AT&Ts end too. This same thing happened a couple years ago and then after a month or so just stopped. Am I the only one that remembers that?
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