Activating your own personal cell tower

As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot that takes place during device provisioning. Before anything is plugged in, the MicroCell has to be registered online with AT&T for both E911 and spectrum regulatory reasons. As I mentioned earlier, AT&T doesn't want to try and run the femtocell on spectrum they aren't licensed for, and there isn't uniform UMTS 850/1900 MHz licensing across the US. In my market, for example, AT&T is only licensed for the 1900 MHz spectrum. 
 
MicroCell management - Can you micromanage a microcell?
 
The registration begins by prompting you to enter the device's serial number. Easy enough. Next, it asks for the physical address where the device is going to be used. I was asked for that information while I was at the store, but had to enter it again during registration. This is important because it's used for E911 as well as for verification against the GPS fix the hardware gets. Finally, you enter the approved device phone numbers that will be allowed to use the microcell. At last, you're told it's ok to plug everything in, and it's time to wait - and believe me, wait you will. This is a process that can take up to an hour, though in practice at the two locations I tested, I saw times of between 20 minutes and a 45 minutes. 
 
There's a lot going on behind the scenes during this process, which explains why it can take some time. I noticed on my hardware during the first activation process that the device restarted cold at least once - it's highly likely there's a firmware update with security fixes and updated software that happens. It's also listening for and building a list of macrocells in range for its handoff list, adjusting its own transmission power, and collecting information about what frequencies are active in proximity. All the while trying to get a good GPS fix and provision itself on the network. After the GPS indicator is solid, the 3G indicators will flash either long pulses or very short pulses until the process is complete. Again, there's zero documentation about what long pulses versus short pulses means, but I saw alternating random patterns of both each time. The whole time, aside from the blinkenlights on the hardware, your only status page is the MicroCell management page in the screenshot above. There's very little in the way of communicating what's going on, it'll just let you know that activation is still pending, it's failed, or it's complete. 
 
Oh noes! I didn't take it apart, I swear!
 
Both times I did this, at the very end of the process the status page briefly communicated that the worst had happened - activation had failed. It's confusing because you'll see the 3G light go solid and your phone join the microcell, but the page will show failed for a minute. Don't panic, look down at your phone. If everything went fine, you should now see "AT&T M-Cell" if you have an iPhone or "AT&T MicroCell" on other hardware as the carrier string:
 
Yes, they also send you an SMS and email with the news
 
It took some of my phones just a few seconds to join the microcell and show the carrier string, it took others a minute or two. I found that restarting the hardware unsurprisingly sped the process and assuaged my impatience. Now that it's working, how well does it work?
Inside The MicroCell: Security Performance Analysis: Data
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  • nimck - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link

    Does anyone know how to configure the Microcell so that it's in a 'Disabled Mode' during certain hours of the day?? I'd like to lessen the radiation emission.
  • lorace - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link

    We got the Microcell from AT&T because of poor signal strength. After it started working we were pleasantly surprised to see that our service bars had increased substantially. Now a new problem. We can't get our phones to transmit or received any picture messages. Anyone have an idea how to solve this problem? We called AT&T tech and they were clueless. lorace1@yahoo.com
  • c21cg - Sunday, February 7, 2016 - link

    i have had TWO of these crappy things, been on the phone for 17 months continously with att to get sorry help, have all the light lit up on the cell and NO service... so now what - oh and I even had to upgrade my wifi to satisfy att- hate ATT

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