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Broadband subscribers already have fast Internet surfing at home, by definition. Carriers may well offer cheaper cell-phone calls for femto customers using their home connection--but broadband subscribers can already do this using Skype, Vonage, or other voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services. Strong cell signals at home are certainly a plus, but it's not clear how much consumers will pay for this, analysts say.
Without an obvious consumer must-have attraction, demand will likely be tied closely to price, Nissen says. If a femtocell is cheap enough, consumers will latch on to the idea, assuming (and this can be a big assumption) that carriers are able to explain and market it clearly. But this price may be a sticking point for some time.
Today, the equipment cost for femtocells runs in the range of $250 to $300. Sprint, one of the first companies to start commercial trials of the products, is offering them to consumers in Denver and Indianapolis for $50 apiece, along with an offer of lower-priced calling plans--altogether a substantial subsidy.
O2's Carvalho says that he expects equipment costs to come down to between 50 and 80 British pounds (about $100 to $160) once standards are set and mass-manufacturing begins. That's an acceptable price range for consumers used to buying products such as Wi-Fi modems, he says.
The standards process may take several years, however. Different equipment vendors use different techniques for aspects such as security, or for letting the femtocells talk to the carrier's core network. Femtocells have been developed for both rival 3G mobile phone standards--W-CDMA and CDMA2000--but different standards-setting bodies are separately at work on rules for each.
In the long term, analysts expect femtocells to be a fast-growing, successful market. In-Stat forecasts that 40.6 million femtocells will be distributed around the world by 2011. ABI Research is even more optimistic, projecting 70 million in use by 2012.
By that time or shortly afterward, analysts say, femtocell technology may be built into other devices, such as Internet routers for consumers.
Vodafone, T-Mobile, and O2 all announced trials early this year. Equipment vendors say that many other carriers are in undisclosed trials as well. Commercial deployment, in which the products will be distributed to consumers by the phone companies or their retail partners beyond the limited scale of Sprint's two-city experiment, is expected by early next year.
That's all assuming that consumers react positively when they actually get a chance to see how the technology works.
"If it winds up being more expensive, but it provides better data rates, it's probably worth the investment for us," says O2's Carvalho. "If it's more expensive but slower, and it annoys customers, we probably wouldn't take that on."
Miniature cell-phone towers can improve patchy coverage and provide super-fast data speeds.
T-Mobile and AT&T use GSM not W-CDMA
The writer may have this confused regarding the underlying technologies that providers in the US are using. Sprint and Verizon use the W-CDMA network technology. T-Mobile and AT&T use GSM.
There could also be issues regarding this if someone sets up a Femtocell at their home and others connect to it because it is the only signal available, the owner or host providing Femtocell access will in essence be sharing their bandwidth (broadband) connection with other cell phone users. This is the same as sharing WiFi service and having half the neighborhood use your connection and not knowing it. It is fine as long as you understand that this is how it works and that you will be giving up part of your bandwidth for the cell access of others.The other side of things is regarding WiMax services. WiMax does not cover everywhere the same way that cellular phone services do not.
Re: T-Mobile and AT&T use GSM not W-CDMA
You are wrong. The author is talking about AT&T's (and soon to be T-Mobile's) 3G UMTS service WHICH IS W-CDMA and runs on top of their older 2G GSM service. W-CDMA is only used as the air interface and so isn't truly related to the actual CDMA service which is used by Verizon and Sprint.
On the subject of this article, this sounds like a BIG LOAD OF CRAP. Like I'm actually going to PAY for a box that allows the cellphone company to offload their network responsibility ONTO MY BROADBAND PIPE? Are you kidding me? Maybe if they sent the box to me free WITH $100 and a 75% discount on monthly minute fess. Even then, it's still a ripoff. This is a TERRIBLE solution for the customer.
A much BETTER SOLUTION is to purchase a smart phone that also uses has a WiFi chipset. When you are at home, you can then simply make phone calls with your existing cell phone that run over the internet connection. This is ALREADY available.
If you want no-setup, same-number, seamless switchover from cellular to Wifi, etc, there is already a product able to do this. Tmobile offers it, called TMobile Hotspot@home. It does exactly what the article is about. It allows Wifi based calling on your existing phone with seamless transfer and no fuss other than installing a small box.
I have always had difficulties using wireless inside buildings. If you live in a basement apartment or concrete and brick faced condo you might appreciate something like this. Especially if it's only $50 for the hardware and you can save on your montly wireless bill.
Same story here. My home is ICF construction with a stucco exterior. Cell phone service inside my home is marginal at best. I would happily pay a reasonable fee to get reliable service inside my home.
It should really catch on in India where all the cell phone networks are overloaded because of unbelievable demand. Greater bandwidth would be the icing on the cake- I hardly get reception because of inadequate number of base stations in my area due to local regulations. I would definitely buy a femtocell thats priced similar to a g wifi router.
And cell phones would just need a software upgrade for password-enabling to prevent femto-network freeloaders.
Better yet, why not make a Wifi cum Femtocell Router? Less no. of devices! It can have your ADSL modem too.
Femtocells are a great solution to poor indoor cellular service becuase a tower is not close enough or because a cellular signal can not effectively penetrate a building. They make no sense when a tower is close enough to provide a strong signal.
Not all solutions fit all consumers. I like knowing I have an option for good home service if I ever move to a home with poor coverage.
An additional benefit would come if the femtocell could travel with us and avoid the very high roaming charges when in anothe network.
I would be very nice to have it in hotel lobbys.
Another Solution to Poor Cellphone Coverage in Homes
Instead of battling with poor cell phone coverage in homes or installing a box, one could make use of a service called Area775 from SIPphone. This service allows a user to seamless transfer calls from cell phones to land lines or PC's that use VOIP even in the middle of a phone conversation without the other party knowing it.
While this service does not offer the convenience of using a single device (cell phone) for communication as in TMobile's Hotspot@home, it provides a means of receiving the highest quality voice service whether at home, in the office, or outside regardless of what cell phone carrier one has.
I understand that one of the big unanswered questions on Femtocells is going to be whether the units are going to be sold with restraints of where they can be used and whether they'll have geolocation units built in to ensure that they're used in the location they're sold to.
There's also going to be complexities in hand-offs which will need to be addressed before success is in sight...
The Gold these companies see is sitting at the bottom of your pockets.I think that the thought of monopolizing a technology which can change the way we treat each other as human beings is orwellian.The only way societes can evolve, is by recognizing themselves as but one part of a larger whole.This applies to every level of society.Providing a free platform for an individual to gain knowledge and interface will someday be a Human Right.
That said, MIT's approach is the best Meraki.com
Our Story
A little about Meraki
Meraki’s mission is to bring affordable Internet access to the next billion people. Meraki’s new approach to wireless networking empowers individuals and groups to bring access to local communities, anywhere in the world.
Meraki has focused on changing the economics of access since its beginning as a MIT Ph.D. research project that provided wireless access to graduate students.
Using their research, Meraki got its start at a low-income housing community in the US. News about Meraki’s products spread by word of mouth into over 25 countries around the world. Every day, new Meraki networks bring access to locations ranging from urban apartment complexes in London to villages in India.
Meraki is based in Mountain View, California, and is backed in part by Google and Sequoia Capital.
I think it'll be a really cool choice if you can add your guests who come to visit you onto your femto network as well... ofcourse the question of different carriers comes here... I think a given femtocell should be able to support all the carriers based on the user's choice then many more consumers would put their money on it...
Guest (wylde brunby)
We could profitably buy the femtocell hardware and hack it to provide an ad hoc mesh network for peer to peer networking.
This will enable us to bypass all efforts at censorship - Long Live Free Speech!
Re: time to hack this hardware
Were you able to get a hack started or even gain access?
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SoundsGr8tome
3 Comments
Femtocells
Isn't there a technology called...ahh...err.....oh yeah.....WIMAX, that will pretty much kill the Femtocell situation IF... WIMAX does WHAT it's supposed to do...WHEN it supposed to?
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burnside
10 Comments
Re: Femtocells
SG82me,
If I were a communications giant beginning to encounter the WiMAX buildout in major markets, I believe I'd promote almost anything 'new' to get clients into annual contracts and, preferably, some equipment purchases.
But that would be cynical of me. Heh.
Seriously, though I look forward to combining internet and telecommunications on WiMAX when it goes live in my city, I'm also interested to see what competing services will offer up in competition. It will need to be more inviting than femtocells, I'll wager.
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