You have to agree not to "move" them around without T-Mobile permission, but I get your drift that they'd be great inside a car.
Let me look at the power supply, which is really all that matters.
The repeater (which basically just picks up a weak signal and amplifies it) has a power supply whose secondary is 12 VDC at 1.5 Amps, which is
*perfect* for a cigarette-lighter adapter, don't you think?The femtocell, which has to be attached to a router, has a power supply secondary output of 12 VDC at 2.0 Amps - which is also within the range of a car.
Of course, they work in hotels too, and camping, so, you *could* get away with it - but I wonder if they could tell?
For the repeater, they might not be able to tell, unless the repeater itself sends a signal *back* to the tower since I've already seen using the debugging tools on the Android phone that the repeater just repeats the
*same* tower information to the phone.That is, the Android debugging tools I've used show clearly that the repeater itself, does not seem to provide the phone with any other number but the nearest (strongest) unique tower number.
However, when my Android phone picks up the femtocell, the *unique* number of the femtocell *is* displayed on the phone (this test can't work on iOS even though the iOS Apple Apologists "say" it can, sans any proof).
In summary, for the free T-Mobile cellular repeater: a. The free repeater use 12 volts DC input at 1.5 Amps of current b. Hence, the repeater could be used in a car, theoretically (I assume) c. Certainly it could be used camping or at a hotel d. But would T-Mobile know that you moved it? e. Maybe not. The repeater just strengthens the local tower strength f. Does the repeater report back to T-Mobile? I don't know.
In summary, for the free T-Mobile cellular femtocell: A. The free femtocell uses 12 volts DC input at 2.0 Amps of current B. But it needs to be connected, via Ethernet cable, to 'something' C. In a car, I don't know of that 'something' to connect to (do you?) D. Certainly it could be used camping or at a hotel if you have an AP E. But would T-Mobile know that you moved it? F. Probably. The femtocell has a unique tower number & your IP address G. However, you can change your IP address so, maybe T-Mobile won't notice? H. But the IP address has a "geolookup" location - which they 'could' see
Dunno enough about this, but I added sci.electronics.repair because smart people like Jeff Liebermann know this stuff far better than I do.
All I know is that T-Mobile gave me both, even though they normally only give you one, because I have a large house and I get my Internet over the air via WISP which Jeff Liebermann is intimately familiar with, so they gave me both, for redundancy, for free, with zero deposit required.