connect to ATT cell booster

@broken1007  If the outside signal, which will vary inside of your home, is stronger than your WiFi signal, the phone will attempt to connect to that, and vice versa. There is nothing you can do to force the phone to preferentially choose one over the other, other than the Airplane Mode trick which just disables the phone's cellular radio and forces you to use WiFi-C. 

For us, 95% of the time our phones stay connected and use WiFi-C. Call quality is excellent. The other 5% of the time the outside signal will hit 3 bars and the phones will use that. Call quality is fine. So for us, we just leave WiFi-C and WiFi enabled all of the time and keep our phones on LTE (because 5G is unreliable in our area). Even when we go to our friend's house across town, who have AT&T, we use their WiFi connection for WiFi-C and it works just fine.

Speaking of LTE, the Cell Booster is LTE only so you should be keeping your phones on LTE. If you have it set to 5G, and your incoming 5G signal is variable, that will "confuse" the phone even further. Ideally, the Cell Booster works best when the outside signal is 1, 2 bars at best and you are set for LTE.

WiFi-C is also dependent on the quality if your WiFi signal and, there is no handing off from a WiFi-C call to cellular (Cell Booster) and vice versa.

See my Cell Booster Tech Guide, link is in my sig line for all things Cell Booster related. Support does what they can to help but all they have is their script to read from and are usually not very well versed in the Cell Booster at all.

Does Wi-Fi calling function on your phone's? If you can turn on Wi-Fi calling unplug the cell booster, and use wifi calling.

If signal if poor, your cellular and Wi-Fi signal may be fighting each other and you need to force Wi-Fi calling by turning airplane mode on and then turn Wi-Fi back on.

Yes Wi-Fi calling works.  

So everything worked just find up to a few weeks ago.  We could have Wi-Fi calling enabled and the iPhones still automatically connected to the cell booster.  All of a sudden we had to force them to connect to the booster. 

after installing ISO 16 my iPhone won’t connect to booster no matter what I try.  

wifi calling on or off no difference 

wifi turned on or off no difference

cellular calling on or off no different 

power off and on the iPhone no difference 

reset booster no difference 

@broken1007  Which iPhone? It shouldn't matter but I just pulled my Cell Booster out of the closet and set it up to test for someone. Took about 20 minutes to register and my iPhone 12 (iOS 16.1, Carrier 52.0) works just fine. The 4G/LTE would flash white and my phone would display LTE (with WiFi-C enabled or disabled). Reliability and range is still an issue but it did work.

Did you Reset Network Settings? If you do, keep your pw's and setting close at hand in case you have to re-enter them.

If WiFi-C works (WiFi Calling) then you really don't need the Cell Booster. I only bring mine back online about every 3 or 4 months just to keep my account active and to receive any updates, if available. Otherwise, we use WiFi-C exclusively.

The auto connect failed on 2 different phones an 8 and a 13 both with iOS 15.6.1 

after updating the iPhone 13 to iOS 16 it won’t connect to booster at all.  The iPhone 8 with iOS 15 still does only if you enable/disable airplane mode. 

With cell booster turned off and I use Wi-Fi calling it drops calls.  I think that is because every once in a while it connects to the outside world cell tower and switches from Wi-Fi to cell.  

my Cell signal in my home is none to 2 bar’s depending on where I stand.  Right now it is the first little bar and just went to none then 2 again back to the smallest bar. 

The last time it dropped a call was while I was on with ATT.  They said they would call back if call dropped but they did not.  

With cell booster turned off and I use Wi-Fi calling it drops calls.  I think that is because every once in a while it connects to the outside world cell tower and switches from Wi-Fi to cell. 

Force wifi calling as in my first post.  I stay in houses where this is the only option as the wifi fights cell signal and call quality is poor if I don't.

Hello there @broken1007,we want to help. Let's meet in a DM (Direct Message) regarding your Cell Booster and dropped calls. Please check your Direct Message Inbox (it's the chat icon next to the bell icon in the upper right corner of the Forums).

In the meantime, try running your device through our troubleshoot & resolve tool to see if that will help improve call quality. 

If this does not help we will be waiting for you in a Direct Message. 

Ashley, AT&T Community Specialist 

@OttoPylot your note about the booster being LTE got me thinking.  I enabled LTE on the iPhone 13 that would not connect to the booster and now it will.  Enable 5G and of course it won’t.  

that resolved that issue.  Now we’ll see if it automatically connects

@broken1007  The Cell Booster and Cell Booster Pro are LTE only. Just like its predecessor, the MicroCell was 3G only. Unfortunately you'll need to leave your phone on LTE at all times when at home if you want to use the Cell Booster. As I mentioned, we just leave our iPhones on LTE all of the time because 5G just isn't reliable enough in our areas to make it worthwhile.

As far as automatically connecting to the Cell Booster, that has been an ongoing issue for a lot of folks, which is something that I saw when I was testing it around the first of the year. I'm usually around so post back if you have issues.