Nokia cell booster (femetocell)

@jccurtiss If it makes you feel better, that's the same problem / behavior I've been having with mine since 01/25 when I activated my CB, per my separate forum thread.  I have two iPhones, and they won't connect to the CB for more than about a minute before dropping off of it.

I've been working with AT&T support and engineering teams for over two weeks now with no improvement, and we've tried everything under the sun for it.

@Nemesis_Prime This doesn't give me much hope for a resolution. I've had three more phone calls since my last post with no resolution either. They are now shipping me a new CB, but I don't expect that will work any better. I'm investigating Verizon as that seems to be more reliable in my location. Without the booster I have no phone signal at all. My husband gets one bar on his phone.

Are you listening AT&T?

@OttoPylot When I disable wifi I have no signal whatsoever. I tried turning off the phone for 5 minutes then turning back on. No signal even though I was standing next to the CB.

The lights on the CB are all solid white. I do not have WiFi-C.

My ISP is Clarity Connect with SPEEDTEST  app showing 59.6 Mbps download speed.

It does seem to connect from time to time for a very brief period of time.

@Gonefishin1 Are you still able to make/receive calls? What I've seen is that the signal strength indicators are not accurate (everyone knows that) but if you look at the actual signal strength, it's quite good. That being said, if you are still dropping calls etc that could either be a service issue area or an ISP issue. The possible reasons are given in my Tech Guide which hopefully will be linked to day to my sig line. Mine is setup upstairs, at the opposite end of the house, and usually indicates only 3 bars max downstairs where we are currently sitting. However, calls are fine with no drops or decrease in quality.

AT&T certainly needs to get this fixed and working reliably but, just like the MicroCell, it wasn't ready for prime time and will take a few weeks to straighten itself out once 3G is finally put to rest. Not an acceptable resolution for sure but that's how AT&T roles.

Thank you for reaching back out to us Nemesis_Prime! 

Please let us know if you have already attempted the troubleshooting steps we previously provided and if it worked for you so we can better assist you in the next steps. 

Looking forward to hearing from you! Thank you for reaching out to the AT&T Community Forums!

Rhoda, AT&T Community Specialist 

@jccurtiss Is Clarity Connect a fixed wireless internet provider? If so, the Cell Booster requires a land-based internet connection (DSL, cable, or fiber). It can work on wireless broadband and some satellite but those services are not supported by AT&T so any issues you have must be taken up with your provider (good luck). Latency is usually the issue because it is one, too variable, and two, probably too high.

@Nemesis_Prime Remind me again, who is your ISP/speeds?

@OttoPylot Cox cable, 180 Mbps down / 10 Mbps up, and my home network is a mesh wifi system with a gigabit ethernet backhaul, so it's doubtful to be my Internet service.

We tried playing with the ports, and connecting the CB directly to the cable modem to bypass the home network, no difference.  AT&T sees communication with the CB fine, and confirmed when I made a call during one of the short one minute CB connections that they saw it go through the CB (and it dropped with a call failed when my phone fell off the CB.)

@Nemesis_Prime Thanks. It's getting hard for me to remember all the different scenarios that I'm trying to help people with.

Your speeds are fine as long as they are consistent and the ports are open all the way to AT&T with no load balancing, re-routing, or issues upstream.

Is the Cox-supplied modem just a modem and not a gateway? I'm thinking double NAT here.

Have you check the router to make sure that ALL of the router requirements are being met? Usually dropped calls have something to do with the ISPs connection to AT&T. That's not saying that AT&T blameless it's just that more times than not, at least with the MicroCell, it was an ISP routing issue.

It could also be a service area issue because AT&T just hasn't gotten all the kinks worked out yet between the transition of 3G shutting down in about a week and the "new" network configurations. Not an excuse because AT&T should have been better prepared and made sure that enough resources were allocated to handle the transition and the startup of the new Cell Booster.

@OttoPylot Thanks so much for all your suggestions and for following this thread. Clarity Connect is a direct fiber line run to our house. There is an ethernet cable run from Clarity Connect's router (not sure if that's the correct terminology) directly to the Cell Booster.

Thank you also for the Cell Booster guide. I've skimmed through it and will take some more time to read it this evening. Some of it is beyond my technical knowledge, but it seems very helpful. Thank You!