iPhone 5 iOS 9.2.1 wont connect to mCell

I just had the same problem...this apparently has been a persistent problem for at least 4 years, and ATT has done NOTHING to help in terms of technical directives. In fact, in an emergency 911 situation, I think they would be liable.

In any case, here's how I fixed it, on the basis of a 4 year old post that I stumbled on, and I mean that literally:

1. Go to the ATT Microcell login site: https://www.att.com/3gmicrocell/unauth/login.do?target=FOAMS. Don't bother with the typically stupid ATT.com site. It will just confuse you--at least it confuses me.

2. DISABLE your MicroCell device. Make sure you copy the device number to have it handy when you reactivate in a second.

3. ATT will route you through some new login garbage, but persevere and you will come back to the MicroCell installation page.

4. REACTIVATE your Microcell device. This will apparently force a software update. You can track it from the web page via a button that indicates such. 

5. When the MicroCell device is reinstalled, DELETE all the listed devices (you could  have done this first, but I did it this way. Presume both ways work).

6. Now you have a clean slate: the MicroCell with one anchor cell phone listed. Add in any other phones or iPads (in my case) that you want to activate. It's tedious, but go ahead and do it.

7. SAVE everything -- go back to Manage My MicroCell page and it should confirm all your changes.

8. Go to each listed device and either reboot or toggle the Airplane Mode. As each comes up, the MCell Icon should appear in the upper left of your iPhone 5 or iPad screen.

That's about it. Worked for me--hopefully it will also work for you guys.

This is an egregious omission on ATT management's part in my opinion, and possibly a dangerous one in an emergency. There is no reason that they shouldn't have sent out a technical bulletin as an email to all of us who have the older (white) MicroCells, and/or briefed their retailers and call-center responders, all of whom seem to have been mostly in the dark about this for years. OR they should have made sure that the white MicroCells all were patched automatically. Typical inattention to detail--highly annoying and frustrating.

Good luck!

@mstraton4 - it would be helpful to know where you are located. Just the region, not your address. There appears to be an issue in So. Calif. which may have something to do with various service areas. I am in the Bay Area of Calif. and we have not experienced any issues at all with our iPhones (an old 3GS and a brand new 5SE) so this may be a regional switch issue or an upgrade to the mobility network that didn't go as planned. I'm trying to find out now so we'll see.

@geoguy - the "fix" you mention has been documented a number of times and has resolved some issue when the problem was a backend issue with the MicroCell accounts. It's analogous to deleting an app and starting all over if for some reason it doesn't work right.

This sounds great, except when I get to step 4, I go through the steps and get "FTC191: Operation is not allowed at this time. Please try again later."

I guess I'm no worse off, it wasn't working anyways. I'm already super frustrated with AT&T. I'm in the middle of the suburbs and have no signal so need a microcell (had it for years), yet when I drive my son to camp in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, I have a 4 bubble signal. /boggle.

@mhedstrom1 - if you've had the MicroCell for years then maybe it's the ac adapter that is starting to fail. We see that a lot with the older MicroCell's. If you detail your problem a bit more and explain your setup maybe we can get you back up and running.

OttoPylot - the lights on the Microcell are all green, if there was an AC adapter problem, wouldn't it be off or something?

I finally made it through the above steps, it activated, reboot my phone, and it still hasn't connected back to the microcell yet. I had no problems up until about last week. My husband's phone is the exact same, his won't connect either.

To add, I also reboot the microcell, rebooted our phones twice, did the airplane mode thing, and still nothing. 

When the ac adapter starts to fail all kinds of odd things will happen. The lights may be a solid green because there is enough power to operate them but the radios may not have enough power. Or, the power light is green but all other lights are off. It's really frustrating. That's why we suggest checking the adapters first thing.

I would send a pm to CustomerCare explaining your problem, what you have done to correct it, your account information, the best way for them to contact you and  your location. It could be something with your service area and not necessarily the phone or MicroCell. It would be helpful to know the location of the problem phones. Not the addresses, just the City/State. It could be a service area issue that just happens to coincide with folks updating their iOS's.

What's difficult for me is that we have a couple of different iOS phones and none of them are experiencing what folks are reporting. I just updated my iPhone 5SE to iOS 9.3.3 (AT&T 24.2) with no problems at all.

Don't remember if I posted this in this thread or not but the adapter should read 16VDC +/- 0.5 with no load. If not, replace it with one of the exact same power rating as the MicroCell is finicky with its power requirements. A hard reset of the MicroCell is also something that you may want to try as well.

Thanks, we switched out the adapter and did a hard reset, and still nothing. I'll email Customer Care.