Technical information

MicroCell
™
Informational Document for
Technical, Operational, and Troubleshooting Issues v1.7
by Otto Pylot
Page 18 of 23
this is only a temporary “fix”.
Dropped Calls and/or Call Quality:
The main cause seems to be variable internet speed. The faster, and more stable
your speeds are, the better the call, connectivity and quality-wise.
Latency, packet loss, etc will affect your calls. RTP jitter can also be a problem with
VoIP calls using the MicroCell. RTP (Real Time Protocol) is defined as the variation
in the delay of received packets and can be caused by network congestion, improper
queuing, or configuration issues.
Another cause may be that the tower signal is stronger than the MicroCell signal
(see Handing Over and Initial Activation above). Disabling call handout on your
MicroCell Settings page (under your myAT&T account) may help
Apparently you can call Support and the agent will open a ticket to have the tower
signal compared to the MicroCell signal. I don’t know how useful this would be
because I doubt if Support can properly interpret the numbers unless they are
glaringly different, and there is nothing that can be done with tower signal strength.
Keep in mind that a stucco house can act as a Faraday cage and interfere with your
calls. Terrain, weather, buildings, building construction, foliage, and tower aim can
all play a role in increasing or decreasing tower signal strength.
Turning off LTE (on an iPhone 5 for example) may improve the signal if the phone
sporadically detects LTE and tries to connect to it.
Leave WiFi on your phone turned on. That way, data is handled by your router’s
WiFi and voice is left to the MicroCell.
Vonage:
If you have the Vonage VoIP service you may encounter MicroCell problems with the
use of the Vonage v-Adapter.
Vonage uses the SIP ALG protocols (Session Initiating Protocol Application Layer
Gateway) which is used to try and avoid configuring static NAT on a router. Many
routers today come with this feature enabled by default. While ALG could help in
solving NAT related problems, the fact is that many router’s ALG implementations
are wrong and break SIP.
SIP ALG will not cause problems with the MicroCell as the MicroCell does not use SIP
protocols. However, in many cases, the SIP ALG is implemented poorly and can