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| Photo by Bill Adler |
Do you have poor cell phone reception in your house, apartment or office? One solution is to get a microcell. A microcell (also called a femtocell) is a low-power cell phone tower that you can set up where you want. The microcell device itself is about the size of a router, not an actual cell phone tower (phew).
Microcells connect to your carrier's phone network via the Internet. So the path is cell phone to microcell to Internet to cell phone network, and vice versa. Because your call is routed through your own, very local cell phone antenna, voice and data signals are very strong.
Microcells have some limitations and problems. For one thing, you have to buy your microcell. That's right: If your cell phone reception sucks, your cell phone carrier will give you the privilege of paying more to have the quality reception you should have in the first place. Second, when you're on a call on
your carrier's regular network, and connect to your microcell, you may lose the call. One the plus side, because your voice and data are routed through the Internet, voice and data use made on a microcell may not count against your cell phone voice and data plan: You may be able to have unlimited voice and data at home.
I've used a microcell with AT&T and it works fine.
For more information about microcells, take a look at this PC World article: http://bit.ly/UVfhSX . For details about your carrier's microcell details, just Google your cell carrier's name along with "microcell."
Because a lot of people only need microcells for a short period of time, you can often buy used microcells on eBay.
Microcells connect to your carrier's phone network via the Internet. So the path is cell phone to microcell to Internet to cell phone network, and vice versa. Because your call is routed through your own, very local cell phone antenna, voice and data signals are very strong.
Microcells have some limitations and problems. For one thing, you have to buy your microcell. That's right: If your cell phone reception sucks, your cell phone carrier will give you the privilege of paying more to have the quality reception you should have in the first place. Second, when you're on a call on
your carrier's regular network, and connect to your microcell, you may lose the call. One the plus side, because your voice and data are routed through the Internet, voice and data use made on a microcell may not count against your cell phone voice and data plan: You may be able to have unlimited voice and data at home.
I've used a microcell with AT&T and it works fine.
For more information about microcells, take a look at this PC World article: http://bit.ly/UVfhSX . For details about your carrier's microcell details, just Google your cell carrier's name along with "microcell."
Because a lot of people only need microcells for a short period of time, you can often buy used microcells on eBay.
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