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kotaKatlast Wednesday at 6:13 PM2 repliesview on HN

No, in this case the consumer femtocells on the market (AT&T Cell Booster, Verizon LTE Network Extender) are actual eNodeBs inside the carrier’s RAN. They will IPSEC tunnel back to a security gateway (SeGW), grab provisioning information, and then come up on the carrier’s commercial license as just another (fancy low powered) LTE radio on the network.

AT&T did try to add some additional tamper switches and protection inside their units so they’d brick if you opened them - that was known since the MicroCell era. I believe T-Mobile’s former CellSpots were also tamper-protected in the same manner (they both deployed Nokia LTE small cells).

AT&T also appears to now charge you for the privilege of deploying the newer Cell Booster Pros if you want 5G - I assume that cost ($30/mo per cell!) is basically covering licensing the backend for all of that.

Wi-Fi Calling uses a different SeGW endpoint and is pure IMS back to the carrier voice network, regardless if you shoot it over WiFi or back over a dedicated APN on the LTE network in the normal VoLTE fare.


Replies

seltzered_last Wednesday at 7:19 PM

Thanks for adding some information on this, I had almost forgot about these devices.

So would a cell booster / network extender using eNodeBS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENodeB ) actually help in the scenario in the original article?

Or would it end up as the same issue with wifi calling, where "messages from 5 digit shortcodes often aren't supported over wifi calling" ?

PaulDavisThe1stlast Wednesday at 6:30 PM

Thanks for injecting some hard facts into this. Too many folks don't understand the difference.