That’s right kiddies!  Your iPhone just does not do it anymore eh?  Since upgrading to 3.0 you have seen worse performance and even worse battery life since 3.1? (more on that here) Dropped calls eh?  MMS coming in WAY late?  Missed a call… 4 hours ago?  Well, there is a fix to all this.. short of moving to a better cell coverage area or dropping AT&T altogether, GIVE THEM MORE MONEY!  Yes, that will fix it!  Lets Pay them $150 ($20 a month more for unlimited) for a device that will let you use YOUR phone on YOUR interwebs connection that YOU pay for!  Sweet!

Yes, I’m sure you have have all heard about AT&T’s new product, the 3G microcell.  This device will connected your iphone to your home network giving you voice and data.  Now, if I lived outside of a normal population area, outside of the ‘claimed’ service network, I could see the justification for such a service.  But if you are in the heart of the city, like San Francisco, and whole area’s are ‘cell purgatory’, then this is just insult onto injury. From the sites I’ve seen so far, everyone is screaming bloody murder on this one. Another AT&T public relations FAIL.

To be fair AT&T are not the only ones: … Sprint charges $20 a month for its AiRave femtocell and Verizon charges $250 for its Network Extender box. T-Mobile charges $10 a month for its @Home service, which uses Wi-Fi instead of a cellular connection, but does the same thing. … (Gizmoto)

As for me I’m still under contract, so I’m just going to wait it out and move to another service.  Its a shame too because the iphone is still the best smart phone out there so far. (iTunes not withstanding).