Worst customer service and tech support EVER

Just to clear up a couple things.  If you are outside the coverage area, calls and text message will fail.  No missed calls or voicemail.

You need to know your rights:

If ATT has cut service in your area you have the the right to discontinue service at no additional cost to you and seek service elsewhere.

Section 1.3 of your customer agreement.

IF WE INCREASE THE PRICE OF ANY OF THE SERVICES TO WHICH YOU SUBSCRIBE, BEYOND THE LIMITS SET FORTH IN YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE SUMMARY, OR IF WE MATERIALLY DECREASE THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA IN WHICH YOUR AIRTIME RATE APPLIES (OTHER THAN A TEMPORARY DECREASE FOR REPAIRS OR MAINTENANCE), WE’LL DISCLOSE THE CHANGE AT LEAST ONE BILLING CYCLE IN ADVANCE (EITHER THROUGH A NOTICE WITH YOUR BILL, A TEXT MESSAGE TO YOUR DEVICE, OR OTHERWISE), AND YOU MAY TERMINATE THIS AGREEMENT WITHOUT PAYING AN EARLY TERMINATION FEE OR RETURNING OR PAYING FOR ANY PROMOTIONAL ITEMS, PROVIDED YOUR NOTICE OF TERMINATION IS DELIVERED TO US WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER THE FIRST BILL REFLECTING THE CHANGE.

If you lose your eligibility for a particular rate plan, we may change your rate plan to one for which you qualify.

The minimum router requirements for the MicroCell are as follows:

DHCP enabled

Ports that must remain open (public and private):

123/UDP - for NTP traffic.

443/TCP - for HTTPS over TLS/SSL for provisioning and management traffic.

4500/UDP - for IPSec NAT Traversal (for all signaling, data, and voice traffic).

500/UDP - for IPSec Phase I prior to NAT detection, after which 4500/UDP is used.

IPSec Pass-Through is enabled

Block Fragmented Packets is disabled

NAT duties handled by only one device if you have a separate router and modem (gateway)

AT&T can check to see if those ports are open on their end. I would ask the Wireless folks to check, not the U-verse folks. One would think that being as they are the same company they understand each others areas but they don't. They are compartmentalized in that the U-verse folks can't really help with the MicroCell and vice versa. There are online port checkers you can use but they can be unreliable at times. It's best to have the Wireless Support group check.

Don't know what you mean exactly about a personal/company AT&T phone.

Did the MicroCell work correctly and you just started having issues when you got a new phone(s), and if so, what phones did you get?

Failing to follow thru on call-backs is one of my biggest pet peeves with AT&T. Been there, done that.

Can you describe your setup to us, which MicroCell you have (white or black model), and the light pattern on the MicroCell (when you have issues and when you don't)?

To be clear, MicroCell calls do work at times, but either the call quality (garbled voice, etc) is bad or the calls just drop dead?

You mentioned something about a third party phone provider (or did I miss-read that?). Do you have an AT&T post paid wireless account and have you always had one?

Hi Liz, thanks for responding.  The issue is they will not admit I am not in their coverage area.  I told them I'm not and showed where I am on their coverage map, even pulled up the legend to show their own legend says "tan area serviced by a 3rd party provider for voice" and they keep insisting I'm within their strongest coverage area with a tower less than one mile from my house.  I point blank said it's obvious you don't provide the voice coverage so this issue is not going to be resolved.  They said that's not true.  However a tech support "supervisor" said I should turn off my 4G lte and the issue should be resolved.  If I'm in the strongest coverage area with a tower less than a mile why would I need to turn off the feature you boast is the strongest of all carriers.  She couldn't/wouldn't give a logical answer, neither would the manager at the store I went into nor would the tech support guy, Heath, when I asked him the same question. 

Please answer my questions above. Specificially, the type of phones you have, who actually is your cellular provider, etc. The disabling of LTE has been an ongoing issue for some customers and phones but we need some basic info in order to help you.

Thank you Otto, here's the deal.  I went into the store to speak to someone because I'm tired of the run around.  It was just before closing time and the store manager Juan said when he got into work the next day he would see what was going on.  He had someone from tech support call me, since I was at work I was able to speak to him without getting disconnected.  He is the one that said I needed to call Uverse tech support to see if the port was open.  So this was wireless tech support I was talking to.  

Personal phone meaning my ATT phone, business phone meaning a company phone I used in their name with ATT service.  The point being it wasn't an issue with my phone. 

The MicroCell has worked intermittently since I installed it.  Same phone and with a different phone.  Exchanged the MicroCell in less than a year and same issues.

Black MicroCell, all lights on, full bars, sitting near a window on my desk and zero obstructions outside.  I'm on the third/top floor with a greenbelt behind me and trees as far as the eye can see.  

Issues are anytime, nothing specific.  The quality of the call isn't really an issue.  It's connecting to a call or keeping a call connected as well as incoming calls not registering - no missed calls, no voicemails. 

I have 3 ATT phones on my plan, not sure what post paid wireless account means.  By third party I meant that the ATT coverage map shows a small section in the middle of their best service area in tan and per the legend it says voice service provided by a 3rd party provider.

To clarify, my phone works perfectly across the street and everywhere else.  The other two lines are my daughters and they live in different cities near me.  I can't sent picture texts AT ALL here anymore where as regular texts are hit and miss.

I'll check the settings on the MicroCell.  

When I pushed the tech support guy to admit they weren't providing the voice coverage for my phone and that's why submitting another engineering ticket wouldn't work he said if they didn't even with the MicroCell I wouldn't be able to make calls.  But isn't the MicroCell like VOIP.  Ofcourse it works the MicroCell, it's using ATT internet to do so.   

The phone I use here is an ATT Galaxy S6, we are on ATT wireless plan and have Uverse internet and cable.

@Lori28t

Good information. Thanks.

Corporate stores, while most managers will try to help, are pretty much useless in what they can do. All they can really do is contact Support which you've already done.

A post paid AT&T cellular account is basically a contract account. If you were able to activate and register the MicroCell with the phone number associated with that account, then you have a post paid account because the MicroCell can not be registered and activated with a pre paid account (a GoPhone for example). However, any type of AT&T cellular account can be added to the Approved Users List for MicroCell use.

If all of the lights on the MicroCell are a steady, solid green, then the MicroCell is working as expected. If any of the lights blink green or red, that's indicative of a problem. A solid green 3G light means you have connectivity to the AT&T Mobility Servers.

What you are not going to want to hear is that there are issues with Galaxy phones or pretty much any phone that has the Android OS with reliable connectivity to the MicroCell. It's an issue that Samsung has been aware of for a very long time, and admits as much, but has been relucatant to work the AT&T on correcting it, and vice versa. It basically has to do with the open-sourceness of the Android OS and all the extra "stuff" that the OEM and At&T pile on top of the OS.

Yes, the MicroCell uses VoIP technology. What bothers me though is that your celluar network is provided by a third party for your specific service area. During Initial Activation (the details of which are given in my Tech Guide, link in my sig) the MicroCell will "look" for the tower closest to it for E911 registration, signal timing, initial location, and signal strength. The MicroCell will then adust its output to the tower output so that the MicroCell is the stronger signal and your phone will connect. Ideally, the further you are away from a tower, the stronger the MicroCell signal output is and vice versa. The phone, in turn, registers the MicroCell to its "cellular neighborhood" for handing off. Some phones handle this handing off transition better than others. Page 12 of my Tech Guide goes into the details a bit about handing off, be it a soft hand off or a hard hand-off. LTE has been troublesome because AT&T has been messing with it because of one, to increase LTE coverage and two, for WiFi calling. That's why turning off LTE seems to be the only workaround again because some phones can handle that transition better than others. The LTE issue has mostly affected Android-based phones but it has affected some iPhones as well. To be clear, local tower coverage is not necessary for the MicroCell to work after registration/activation because your calls do go thru the AT&T network not the tower closest to you.

Depending on who the third party cellular provider is, they may have issues with implementing the LTE requirements of AT&T or, depending on what kind of agreement they have, they can do what they want as far as minimum AT&T requirements are met. It is an odd situation that bears a little more closer inspection.

WiFi calling is being rolled out to the AT&T Service Areas, which requires LTE, and they may be another contributing factor to your issues. Unfortunately, WiFi calling is not available on Android-based phones because of the difficulty in implementing it across the many open source OS's and Android devices available. It it coming (probably) but not for a while yet. WiFi calling is only available on iPhone 6 and above at present.

So, what to do?

Verify that the router requirements are being met. Then you can rule that out as a possible problem.

If you have a separate router and modem you can try the alternate connection which is connecting the MicroCell directly to the modem, which bypasses the router altogether. If you have a gateway (modem and router in one), you're stuck with that setup and you can't test that connection any further.

I'm not clear if all of your phones on the MicroCell list (primary and Approved Users) are all Android-based phones or not. I'm assuming that all of them have the same problem.

Another option for you to try is port forwarding the 4 required ports to a statically assigned IP address for the MicroCell. I do that and it just makes for a much more stable connection especially if you are prone to power outages. However, we can't help you with the details of the doing that because of the countless router models, firmware versions, LANs, etc. Besides, we don't want to be responsible for messing with someone's LAN in case something goes wrong. Sounds harsh I know but that's the honest truth.

The MMS/SMS issue is most likely the Android issue of which there is nothing that can really be done as I have mentioned. Some Android users noticed an improvement after an update (Lollipop), others lost that functionality altogether after an update

If turning off LTE works so that you can at least make and receive calls with no problems then that's what you will have to do. That's a tower function (phones locking on to the LTE and unable to smoothly hand off to the MicroCell) and being as it is a third party provider, I'm not sure what can be done. The messaging issues is an Android problem.

You can try a hard reset of the MicroCell and see if that improves the handing off issue. Probably not but at least it's worth a try. Turn off the power to the MicroCell. Push a paperclip into the Reset hole on the back of the MicroCell. Keep pushing in and restore power. Hold in the button for about 30 seconds and then release it. The MicroCell should then go thru the Initial Activation process as if it was brand new. You shouldn't have to do anything with your myAT&T MicroCell account. If successfull, then I would completely power off your phones and then turn them back on again. That re-establishes the phones cellular neighborhood for handing off, etc.

Wow Otto, you the man!  So my rant and goal of putting ATT on blast in this public forum actually worked.  I was promptly contacted by Bri, who in just 45 minutes on the phone with me, was able to provide more insite, show genuine empathy over this ongoing situation and restore my faith in hopes of a resolution one way or another than the multitude of incompetent, poorly trained, reps in several departments company wide was able to over the last year and a half. 

I have the gateway router so that limits that option.  The other phones are both iphones and believe it or not, now that you mention it my daughter was just here and sent a picture text just fine.  They don't live here so they aren't effected by these issues however my son was visiting from Colorado, has a Samsung and had the same issues I do!  Again, it's a sporadic issue so it hadn't occured to me that behavior was different between the Android and the iPhone with this issue. 

Very good information and I appreciate it so much, sincerely I do. 

I'll check the router settings as you've suggested.  Just clicking the button turn off the 4GLTE didn't work so I did some research on how to do it and this is what I found and now I can keep calls connected more often that before even though it hasn't been a fix.  Maybe this will help someone else. 

1. Open dialer
   2. Dial *#*#4636#*#*
   3. Device information 
   4. Scroll down and then choose your preferred network type:
   

• WCDMA Preferred = Your phone will prefer UMTS/HSPA or HSPA+. Will connect to EDGE if it has to. NO LTE.
• GSM If selected, your phone will only connect to EDGE (2G). You will be able to call, text, and use slow data.
• WCDMA UMTS/HSPA+ only. No EDGE, or LTE whatsoever
• GSM/CDMA Auto= Will connect to either UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+ or EDGE (which ever one is available)
• LTE/CDMA Auto = Will only connect to LTE and UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+, NO EDGE
• LTE/GSM/CDMA Auto = Will connect to LTE, EDGE, or UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+
• LTE/GSM Auto = DEAFAULT SETTING

LTE You will only have LTE. You cannot make calls under this setting. Good for those who want data and text capabilities

Thanks again Otto, have a great evening and I'll keep you posted!

Just to be clear, I am not an AT&T employee but, as an ACE, we do have a little more access to levels of support than the regular posters. We basically help out where support fails because we are users just like you and are not subjected to following the script of rules that Support has to. To be fair, there are folks in support who truly want to help and quite often they can. But they are limited in what they can do and it's my opinion that they don't get anywhere near the support and/or proper training that they need to adequately help customers. That's why we volunteer as ACE's are here. It's also what got me to write the Tech Guide that a lot of people find useful. However, AT&T Support is not supposed to refer to it because it's not an official AT&T supported document. That being said......

Nothing wrong with having a gateway. They work quite well. It's just that the alternate connection is a quick and easy way to deteremine if its a setting or something somewhere in the router.

I leave WiFi enabled on my iPhone at all times. That way only voice goes thru the MicroCell and all data goes thru my WiFi connection. It seems that iPhones are better at determining how data is to be sent that Android devices because the MMS/SMS issue appears to happen rarely on the iPhone, and that can sometimes be corrected by Reset Network Settings on the iPhone (even though passwords and login info will be lost and need to be put back in).

Android-based phones are fine and work very well. It's just that they may need a little more care and feeding than iPhones. This is not to be inferred that iPhones are better. They're just different.

Please do keep us posted. I'm also only a pm away.

Thanks Otto!  I understand you don't work for ATT, you couldn't provide the level of support you have if you did.  I totally understand they are limited to what they can do and unfortunately it's the end user that suffers.  Trust me, I've been thru the ridiculous flip chart of troubleshooting questions more times than I can count but what they can do is acknowledge the answser I give and apply it to help resolve the issue faster.  One "supervisor" I spoke to told me 3 times everything was fine at my address even after I repeatedly told him I'm not at that address anymore.  Stuff like that is a huge problem.  That's why I said I'd be embarrassed if I was an ATT exec with the level of support they are taught or allowed.  Evreything I've been able to improve since this ordeal happened has been on my own thru my own research.  Pretty shaddy indeed.  My WiFi is always on too but even my data is a effected.  I just don't know.  I'll wait for the next step and decide what to do then.

BTW - today was my first day to post - I don't know how to PM  LOL