Microcell not working - GPS and 3G lights blinking/flashing green simultaneously constantly

@Avedis53 - thanks for stepping in. We just moved up to your neck of the woods today so you’ll have to do some heavy lifting until I my internet setup. Looks like there’s some variation in the poster’s  VoIP tests.

While the second test results are improved over the first, the jitter is still marginal and can cause issues with voice clarity and dropouts.  Continue to run tests at various times of the day to see if there are any patterns that turn up.  For example, degraded test results during expected times of heavy internet use (early evening) vs. better results during off-hours.  This could help your ISP determine what the issue might be with your connection.

If you continue to see poor VOIP test results, I would contact your ISP and have them send a tech to ring out your line and see if they can determine what the issue might be.  From what I've seen reported here over the years, DSL is a lot more problematic than cable internet when it comes to line quality issues.  I'm not sure what else we can do to help you other than to review additional VOIP test results and try to interpret them for you.

@Avedis53 - Thank you very much for the additional information.   I will continue to run the VOIP tests throughout the day to determine the average results.   At this point, it does not look good.   I will contact my ISP (AT&T Uverse) and have them come out to my home and ring out my line.  This is so frustrating.   Again, thank you and @OttoPylot for all your help.   After I get the AT&T tech to ring out my line and fix the issue, I will return to this post and let you know the solution so it can benefit future users/readers if they run into the same problem.   Have a great day!  🙂

Good luck.  I hope the AT&T Uverse tech is of more help than their phone support.  I'm curious about anything they might find but honestly, don't hold your breath.  Internet line quality problems, especially intermittent issues are hard to pinpoint.  DSL seems more prone to these sort of problems than cable, but Otto would probably disagree with me.  The more history you can show the tech, the better, so print a few of your test reports for him.  If you can determine a time period where the results are usually poor and it's within their service hours, try to schedule him for that time.

@Avedis53 - Thank you so much.   I will try to schedule the AT&T tech to come out during the time of day when my connection seems to have the most problems.  Yeah, I am not holding my breath.   I have had the AT&T tech out here twice in the past 3 months and they have not been much help.   They did improve the speed of my internet slightly, but not by much.  Looks like I might be out of luck at this point.  AT&T is the only ISP in my area currently but I hear that cable will be offered in my area soon.  I cannot wait.  I am ready to ditch AT&T.   It has been pretty poor service since I began service with them about 4 years ago.

@OttoPylot - Thank you.   Yeah, I was afraid of that.  I'm sure they will come out and look at my VOIP results and tell me that the internet is working fine so there is really nothing they can do for me.  But I am going to call them out just to see what they say.   I will report back with my experience with the AT&T tech after he comes out next week.   

@OttoPylot & @Avedis53 

Quick question....on the 8x8 VOIP Test website, what is the difference between the two codecs from which you can choose for the testing (G.711 and G.729)? 

I just ran a test using the G.729 Codec and it is giving me much better results than when I tested the line using the G.711 Codec.  Thank you in advance for your help.

Here are my results using the G.729 Codec vs the G.711 Codec at 2:50AM Central Time:

Using the G.729 Codec
Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 9511 kbps
Upload speed: 4100 kbps
Download consistency of service: 70 %
Upload consistency of service: 93 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 107 ms
Average download pause: 3 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 71 ms
Average round trip time to server: 74 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 22997 kbps
Route concurrency: 2.4177358
Download TCP forced idle: 70 %
Maximum route speed: --

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 3.0 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 1.7 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 0.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.2

Using the G.711 Codec
Speed test statistics
---------------------
Download speed: 6181 kbps
Upload speed: 2163 kbps
Download consistency of service: 81 %
Upload consistency of service: 0 %
Download test type: socket
Upload test type: socket
Maximum TCP delay: 93 ms
Average download pause: 4 ms
Minimum round trip time to server: 71 ms
Average round trip time to server: 83 ms
Estimated download bandwidth: 21270 kbps
Route concurrency: 3.441127
Download TCP forced idle: 71 %
Maximum route speed: 7384 kbps

VoIP test statistics
--------------------
Jitter: you --> server: 7.8 ms
Jitter: server --> you: 9.8 ms
Packet loss: you --> server: 0.0 %
Packet loss: server --> you: 0.0 %
Packet discards: 2.0 %
Packets out of order: 0.0 %
Estimated MOS score: 4.0

I received an email that you (gn87man) posted here asking about the differences between the G.711 and G.729 voice codecs used for VOIP.  The post is not showing up here on the forum though.  Good old Lithium.  At any rate, the question was why does the G.729 codec provides better test results than the G.711 codec?

Without getting into details that would be confusing, simply put, the difference between the two codecs is the amount of bandwidth they use.  G.711 codec's bandwidth is 87 kbps.  G.729 codec bandwidth is 32 kbps.  I would expect that you would get better results testing with the G.729 codec as it requires 2 1/2 times less bandwidth than the G.711.

Your test results reflect that.  While you are still showing some jitter that could be better, your MOS score is 4.2 using G.729  The results using G.711 are worse (d/l jitter - 9.8 msec, u/l jitter - 7.8 msec, packet discards - 2.0%).

G.729 codec uses more compression and complex algorithms to synthesize a human voice from your voice to reduce bandwidth.  It takes a lot more processing cycles to do all that though.  That's why some VOIP gear limits the number of streams it is capable of processing for.  The upside is voice comms sound acceptable but use a third of the bandwidth of G.711.

I believe AT&T uses G.711 but I'm not positive.  If you were using WiFi Calling (which you should since the Mcell is going away), I think it uses G.722 (HD Voice) for an enhanced voice quality which is quite noticeable.

So there's the 5 cent answer to your question.  Let us know what the tech finds out but since they've been out to your house before, I'm not optimistic.

@Avedis53 - thanks Chief for stepping in.

@gn87man - yes, do post back and let us know.

@Avedis53 - Thanks so much for the helpful information.  It makes more sense now.   That is so strange that my previous post (with my test results from the G.711 and G.729 codecs) did not show up in the forum.   Anyways, thank you again.   Yeah, I do not believe the AT&T techs will be much help, but I will give them another try.  🙂

@OttoPylot - Will do!   Thank you!