[paulker]

I am getting one tomorrow. I plan on using it at my mums house as she has no network coverage in her house on any network despite having a t-mobile/3 mast about 300 yards away. The antennae point in the wrong direction and her house is in a dip.

I am going to try it in my house first even though I have a good Orange signal (poor t mobile). I have an actual throughput broadband connection of 37 down and 8 up so should work very well.

Could also use it in my office which despite being in a great coverage area its a metal building so signal is only acceptable inside but my broadband in work is a bit pants 4 down and 0.6 up. I have two employees on Orange and not having the option to register phone numbers on this box it could pose a problem with three people using mobiles at the same time leaving me with really poor internet.

[The Lord Lucan]

Originally Posted by paulker

I have an actual throughput broadband connection of 37 down and 8 up so should work very well.

Be very interested in what speeds you get.

[DevonBloke]

Originally Posted by paulker

I am getting one tomorrow. I plan on using it at my mums house as she has no network coverage in her house on any network despite having a t-mobile/3 mast about 300 yards away. The antennae point in the wrong direction and her house is in a dip.

I am going to try it in my house first even though I have a good Orange signal (poor t mobile). I have an actual throughput broadband connection of 37 down and 8 up so should work very well.

Could also use it in my office which despite being in a great coverage area its a metal building so signal is only acceptable inside but my broadband in work is a bit pants 4 down and 0.6 up. I have two employees on Orange and not having the option to register phone numbers on this box it could pose a problem with three people using mobiles at the same time leaving me with really poor internet.

Originally Posted by The Lord Lucan

Be very interested in what speeds you get.

Yeah, when you get it, turn off your wifi and do a 3G speed test. Since your broadband is way faster than HSPA+ it will be interesting to see how fast it goes.

[bluestraw]

I'd love to get myself a femto on Orange / EE - reception sucks inside the house... For those who ordered one today - are you 'EE' customers or actually on Orange? I'm officially Orange-branded so not sure if they'll talk to me?

[paulker]

Originally Posted by bluestraw

I'd love to get myself a femto on Orange / EE - reception sucks inside the house... For those who ordered one today - are you 'EE' customers or actually on Orange? I'm officially Orange-branded so not sure if they'll talk to me?

A business EE customer here. Pretty sure it will work on EE/Orange and T-Mobile phones

[bluestraw]

Originally Posted by paulker

A business EE customer here. Pretty sure it will work on EE/Orange and T-Mobile phones

Yeah I'm sure it will work, just not sure if they'll sell me one!!

[DevonBloke]

Originally Posted by bluestraw

Yeah I'm sure it will work, just not sure if they'll sell me one!!

Wrexham got one on Tmobile residential. Had to get put through to Tmobile business to order one but persevered and got one eventually. Orange should be no different.
I had to go through EE business (I'm on EE4G residential) but after about 6 calls, got one eventually.
A lot of the residential CS staff don't even know about it yet.. You have to keep trying till you get someone with a brain and some common sense

[bluestraw]

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

Wrexham got one on Tmobile residential. Had to get put through to Tmobile business to order one but persevered and got one eventually. Orange should be no different.
I had to go through EE business (I'm on EE4G residential) but after about 6 calls, got one eventually.
A lot of the residential CS staff don't even know about it yet.. You have to keep trying till you get someone with a brain and some common sense

Brilliant! Will see where I can get tomorrow

[jon41]

Did you pay over the phone or added to the bill?

Also what was the total price?

Thanks

[wrexham103.4]

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

Wrexham got one on Tmobile residential. Had to get put through to Tmobile business to order one but persevered and got one eventually. Orange should be no different.
I had to go through EE business (I'm on EE4G residential) but after about 6 calls, got one eventually.
A lot of the residential CS staff don't even know about it yet.. You have to keep trying till you get someone with a brain and some common sense

yes i did spoke to EE business first thing this morning, and the bloke on the phone (very good, full of info) told me to contact tmobile, so i did and they weren't any use (and even told me they dont sel them as they are illegal wtf) and after ages ending up putting me thru to tmob business. Guy i spoke to there was from the UK, again very helpful after i explained my situation, he ordered it straight away.

I think the moral of the story is; if you want good CS on EE/tmob you need to be a business customer (which im not btw )

[wrexham103.4]

Originally Posted by jon41

Did you pay over the phone or added to the bill?

Also what was the total price?

Thanks

added to bill, £89 +VAT

[jon41]

Originally Posted by wrexham103.4

added to bill, £89 +VAT

Thanks very much.

Will try orange business tomorrow.

[DevonBloke]

To add to that they credit check you, or at least the guy I spoke to did to see if it can be added to your monthly invoice. If not you just have to cough up with a card. I passed and it'll be on my next invoice. Mine was just over £105 inc VAT.

[wrexham103.4]

another point to mention is that the guy at tmobile went and checked with the tech team , because apparently you can get a discount on the box if you signal has been affected due to them removing a mast etc,

[paulker]

Originally Posted by wrexham103.4

another point to mention is that the guy at tmobile went and checked with the tech team , because apparently you can get a discount on the box if you signal has been affected due to them removing a mast etc,

I get the feeling my decent signal at my house that is provided by orange will go to pot in the next year. I bet they remove the two orange masts in my area as one is right next to a t mobile one and the other orange mast is 200m from the t-mobile one at that location. My t-mobile indoor signal is

[wrexham103.4]

Originally Posted by paulker

I get the feeling my decent signal at my house that is provided by orange will go to pot in the next year. I bet they remove the two orange masts in my area as one is right next to a t mobile one and the other orange mast is 200m from the t-mobile one at that location. My t-mobile indoor signal is

we used to have full 2g orange signal thru out the house and a decent 3G tmob upstairs, but the orange 2G has gone (even tho tmob wont admit it!) even a network search only brings up t mobile now! so if this femto cell works its going to be great for us. Got 7 days to try it anyway

[DevonBloke]

Originally Posted by wrexham103.4

we used to have full 2g orange signal thru out the house and a decent 3G tmob upstairs, but the orange 2G has gone (even tho tmob wont admit it!) even a network search only brings up t mobile now! so if this femto cell works its going to be great for us. Got 7 days to try it anyway

It's worth pointing out there may be router firewall issues although not normally. Suresignals often have this problem. Ports need to be opened in the router to allow the VPN to connect. Just so you know.

[wrexham103.4]

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

It's worth pointing out there may be router firewall issues although not normally. Suresignals often have this problem. Ports need to be opened in the router to allow the VPN to connect. Just so you know.

thanks ive got a bt home hub so not sure if that will havea fire wall?? im not to technical will we have to call up to register do you think? also where the best place to put it for optimum signal ?

[paulker]

Originally Posted by DevonBloke

It's worth pointing out there may be router firewall issues although not normally. Suresignals often have this problem. Ports need to be opened in the router to allow the VPN to connect. Just so you know.

Had that problem with an old sky router and the virgin super hub thingy. The newer sky routers open the ports for you. Pain in the ass if you need to mess around

[DevonBloke]

Originally Posted by wrexham103.4

thanks ive got a bt home hub so not sure if that will havea fire wall?? im not to technical will we have to call up to register do you think? also where the best place to put it for optimum signal ?

It should be just plug and play. Yes your home hub has a configurable firewall. Plug Femto in and wait for the time stated in the instructions (we don't know what this is yet:-).
I think these new Femtos configure themselves quite quickly. The old Vodafone ones could take 24 hours!
If the EE connection light hasn't come on then the firewall will be blocking it. It may not be a problem though.
I'm pretty good at this stuff (its my job) so don't worry, we'll sort it if its a problem. I have a Netgear router which tend to block Suresignals so it will be interesting.

[xtaz]

Interesting you guys are talking about these. I was on the trial for these for the last 3 months (and got to keep it after the trial, woo). There were quite a few teething problems on the trial which is why they have taken some time to get released. My phone used to prefer the 1 bar of signal from the main network and used to take a lot of work to get it to attach to the femto. Also data was very patchy and rarely worked. As part of the trial feedback they fixed a lot of these issues with config changes to the network etc.

Basically, it is plug and play. You have no access at all to the box. It gets an IP from DHCP, takes about 5 minutes scanning the airwaves to make sure it's not using an existing frequency, and then fires up online. Also I didn't have to change my router settings. It worked out of the box. I allow all outgoing ports, and block all incoming with NAT enabled. Simple.

There are two ways of using it, open mode where anybody can attach to it, or closed mode where you have a whitelist of phone numbers. Currently there is no way of administrating this. I assume when they launch there will be settings on the "Your account" pages, and I've heard rumours that they can be changed via SMS, but I have seen no evidence of this yet.

In use, as expected the phone will show full signal. It generally works fine, data maxes out my broadband at about 8 Meg, but really you don't ever need to use data anyway as I assume most people will be using wifi.

Overall I highly recommend them to anybody with rubbish coverage. And I would be surprised if they didn't offer them to normal customers. The business only thing is probably just so they can do a phased launch and not have tons of traffic chucked at it on day one.

[wrexham103.4]

Originally Posted by xtaz

Interesting you guys are talking about these. I was on the trial for these for the last 3 months (and got to keep it after the trial, woo). There were quite a few teething problems on the trial which is why they have taken some time to get released. My phone used to prefer the 1 bar of signal from the main network and used to take a lot of work to get it to attach to the femto. Also data was very patchy and rarely worked. As part of the trial feedback they fixed a lot of these issues with config changes to the network etc.

Basically, it is plug and play. You have no access at all to the box. It gets an IP from DHCP, takes about 5 minutes scanning the airwaves to make sure it's not using an existing frequency, and then fires up online. Also I didn't have to change my router settings. It worked out of the box. I allow all outgoing ports, and block all incoming with NAT enabled. Simple.

There are two ways of using it, open mode where anybody can attach to it, or closed mode where you have a whitelist of phone numbers. Currently there is no way of administrating this. I assume when they launch there will be settings on the "Your account" pages, and I've heard rumours that they can be changed via SMS, but I have seen no evidence of this yet.

In use, as expected the phone will show full signal. It generally works fine, data maxes out my broadband at about 8 Meg, but really you don't ever need to use data anyway as I assume most people will be using wifi.

Overall I highly recommend them to anybody with rubbish coverage. And I would be surprised if they didn't offer them to normal customers. The business only thing is probably just so they can do a phased launch and not have tons of traffic chucked at it on day one.

thanks for that, lots of useful info there. I was wondering about the list of people allowed to use it, as i maybe providing 3G signal for my neighbours too

[xtaz]

Originally Posted by wrexham103.4

thanks for that, lots of useful info there. I was wondering about the list of people allowed to use it, as i maybe providing 3G signal for my neighbours too

Yeah. During the trial we all had it in closed mode where it was locked to a specific list of numbers we had given. After the trial ended they didn't have the time to administer this list and as a workaround changed everyones boxes to be in open mode where anybody can use it.

Open mode isn't really a big deal. It does mean your neighbours can use it, but the traffic over it is encrypted in a VPN back to the network, so your IP address can never be identified to the general internet. Voice calls don't take much bandwidth. The only problem would be if they used a lot of 3G data rather than wifi. But when it launches you should have the choice of which system you want to use anyway. It's just right now there doesn't appear to be any way for us ex-trialists to change our config.

The signal is actually pretty strong as well. My box is by my front door, and I get full signal in any room of my house, and it even works at the bottom of my back garden.

[paulker]

Originally Posted by xtaz

Yeah. During the trial we all had it in closed mode where it was locked to a specific list of numbers we had given. After the trial ended they didn't have the time to administer this list and as a workaround changed everyones boxes to be in open mode where anybody can use it.

Open mode isn't really a big deal. It does mean your neighbours can use it, but the traffic over it is encrypted in a VPN back to the network, so your IP address can never be identified to the general internet. Voice calls don't take much bandwidth. The only problem would be if they used a lot of 3G data rather than wifi. But when it launches you should have the choice of which system you want to use anyway. It's just right now there doesn't appear to be any way for us ex-trialists to change our config.

The signal is actually pretty strong as well. My box is by my front door, and I get full signal in any room of my house, and it even works at the bottom of my back garden.

I can see problems with the open system for two reasons.

1. If two or three people in your neighbours house are using it to make calls then it limits your own use as there can only be 4 calls at the one time.

2. If you have limited upload or even download speeds your broadband speeds could be really compromised.

[wrexham103.4]

has anyone's come today yet?