Why would anyone run their own base station? With Europe's first femtocell deployment due in two weeks, it's worth taking a moment to consider why you might want to spend your money on extending your operator's coverage, if not just from general goodwill. On Tuesday Vodafone announced that from 1 July UK punters will be able to buy their very own base station to extend …
That's all well and good, as long as you don't use your home network to transfer data between the various machines you have; 802.11g or n is so much faster than 3G that it simply wouldn't be worth it.
Anyway, who mucks around with settings or changes IP addresses when they want to wander off with their laptop? Where DHCP is the norm, it's just a case of a couple of clicks to select an alternate connection, and that's only if their machine doesn't automatically shoose an alternate connection type when the active one fails (eg Ubuntu). Not exactly back-breaking labour, is it?
To summarise: it's a lot of money and some extra hassle so that you can slow down your home network in order to solve a problem that doesn't really exist for the overwhelming majority of the population.
Why? The best most people could hope for is that they never notice a difference.
I hope things have improved, since I used the tech 6 months ago, but data over 3G wasn't so wonderful. You might almost call Winterton a small town, but the cellphone coverage was quite variable, for data. A femtocell, and not having to switch how the laptop connects, is attractive, but can 3G networks in rural areas support the non-femtocell use?
Both myself and my wife have unlimited Vodafone data traffis through our works, and I can say very easily that when we get home or at work we use the wireless links as they are faster. I wouldn't go swapping my WiFi for a GPRS even if they gave me the base station, its just too slow, why would I use that link and add to that by increasing the latancy by putting Vodafone in my broadband link?
The only reason I would agree, is to, as you suggest run a VPN tunnel from somewhere foreign.
......it still doesnt answer why I should pay £160.00 to improve 3G performance for my neighbours when I don't get my traffic priortised, make any money from it, get a discount on my bill from it or do the normal stuff I can do on a WIFI connection like browse NAS units or print to a wireless printer.
It is an already dead technology as it requires that you already have 1meg minimum and stump up some cash. If I had to use 3g it would be because I either can't get >2meg or I was out and about and this helps with neither.
The article refers to 'not paying for data twice'. I don't see how this can be avoided currently. Am i missing something?
Data charge 1: Broadband connection
Data charge 2: Mobile phone
Femto Cell connects to network through broadband connection. No matter what happens the data still has to travel down your broadband connection.
Why would I want to use 3G for internet access in my own home? It’s just not fast enough! I’ll use my laptop and Wi-Fi please… if it wasn’t so convenient, I’d still use Ethernet.
I'd have thought the biggest advantage of this is being able to get a mobile signal in your house.
I may soon find my self having to live in a house where i have zero coverage (cheers orange), but with 12 months left on my contract.
Also, if your going to stay with someone where you know you'll have trouble with signal, take the thing along and plug into their router.
It's a shame this article is making a case for the removal of Wi-Fi... if you had Wi-Fi enabled ones business people could take them on road trips. There have been many a time i've been in the backend of no where, in a hotel with Wi-Fi but no mobile signal.
"but with a femtocell we can have ubiquitous networking, and mobile phone coverage too, without having to muck about with settings or change IP addresses - which seems a reasonable thing on which to spend 160 quid"
I wouldn't pay £80 for ubiquitous networking and mobile phone coverage.
Is it really that hard to make a distinction between the work you do outside using your phone/laptop and the work you do inside using your computer? really?
Call my old fashioned but I keep work at work and it works just fine.
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I quite like having a home LAN that is mostly secured from the outside world where I can share music around my devices and have my xbox talk with my pc talk with my laptop talk with my hifi without having to do weird negotiation with the outside world or having to VPN between them. Just saying.
Articles for the sake of articles is bad editorial. What is this, digg?
"To which the answer is: to replace the Wi-Fi network you're already running."
What complete crap. Utterly bile. This product has *NOTHING* to do with data; does the author remember what a *phone* is?
The purpose of this technology is very simple - it appeals to people who don't get even coverage throughout their home. If you've got nice thick walls, and don't get coverage in certain rooms then this technology means that you can fix things so that when you go into the kitchen, or wherever, then you don't miss all your calls to voicemail. No more having to leave the phone on the windowsill to receive calls, no more sitting by the window because the sofa is out of coverage. Simple.
Far too many to make moving away from my WiFi router connected to my landline broadband. If T-Mobile wnet down this route you'd get a worse off surfing experience, by default using your latptop on their 3G means you go through their proxy which downgrades all images/graphics to a lower quality, for obvious reasons but not something I want experience on a continual basis.
The other overiding factor being I have a home network with 3/4 machines on it for a reason, so counts me out, I'm sure this might be a good option for a single Mac user, they'd be willing to pay the money twice over for less of an experience.
They sell you a 3G micro-range transmitter which connects to what, your broadband, to transmit signal on? Or does it somehow connect to the nearest tower, gaining signal strength by using some means that can't be put in handsets? If the latter, why not? If the former, why?
Either way I guess it could be useful if it uses a licensed frequency as it will get rid of the interference. But bandwidth will be lousy - at best a tenth of wifi - so I can't see takeup for data purposes. After using wifi, my 3G modem seems pitifully slow.
and what is this "unlimited data tariff" of which you speak? Maybe if your'e on the £100 pcm packages.... I'm on PAYG...
"These days we tend to shut down our laptops when we're moving, but the next generation of devices will want to remain connected more continuously"
Not on current battery tech, we don't. Nor on any battery tech likely to come out in the next, say, 5 years, which is when this femto cell stuff is supposed to be happening.
So, let me get this straight, you have broadband, a 3g data plan and you then add a femtocell.
All so you can avoid having to switch a connection when you leave the house with a laptop/netbook/phonethingymajig.
Oh, and other people may be using your femtocell, and thereby your broadband.......
Not an issue for me when I move to Sweden and have 100mb full duplex broadband, but I get a max 512k up in the UK atm, so that's only a couple of calls being routed before I seriously have issues doing anything with my connection.
So, does having my own femtocell mean my 3g data plan becomes unlimited when using said femtocell or do I still get the pathetic 5gb limit before I have to start hocking my soul to cover the 'reasonable' data charges once I go over that?
Though I have to admit, taking it to Sweden with me is sounding fairly attractive, as I already have a vpn server...... Hope the neighbours wont mind.
Paris, 'cos I'm pretty sure she doesn't mind using someone else's phat pipe......
How does this work for other networks? Would my 02 phone treat this cell as any other?
I don't agree with the article in terms of an end to WIFI, at least not in the short to medium term. My own priority is getting any kind of reception for voice and data out here in the sticks.
£160 is well worth the money in my case. I don't know about others.
And its more fun watching BT run about next door trying to work out why....
all they can get is <No-Fi> with the new install they are doing :)
REMEMBER KIDS JUST SAY NO!.... TO WiFi!!!!
Mines the one with.....
Tinfoil lineing with lots of little antenna' on the back radiating noise at 2.4-2.5
So glad somebody mentioned iPhone - I have the unlimited O2 Web and WiFi, tenner a month, I get a good O2 signal at home inside and - oddly enough - my WiFi is a bit patchy around the house (must be the lead-based paint I used last time I redecorated :-), so I can browse unlimited upstairs, downstairs, outside, and in Starbucks.
£160 quid is more than I pay in a year for the unlimited data. So thanks, but no thanks.
I have had a trial Femto unit for several months and would not part with it for all the tea in China.
Firstly something people havent mentioned is that the battery life on your mobile is much better with a femto in the house... Simply your phone doesnt keep hunting for new signals and tunes its power down to suit the femto.
Now Im at home I get crystal clear phone calls, and high speed data making the phone apps far more usable. In fact on both my N95 and iPhone data via Femto 3G is quicker than using wifi - and far more reliable as I walk from room to room. This isnt just a one liner, one of the reasons I have the unit is so I can test througput for both modes.
Someone here mentions why that other people could logon to your Femto and take your broadband - well its up to you whether you allow them on or not.
If you got a flat tariff plan I just dont see the reason why you wouldnt get one, they are amazing and compliment wifi rather than compete.
Cheers - Happy Femto User from Glos
Right, phone on desk here, full 3G signal... at home full 3G... in fact almost anywhere I go 3G is pretty ubiquitous. The only exception is my mothers in a rural part of the country and that's so far from the phone exchange the broadband is even worse.
I guess this would be most use if instead of using broadband backhaul, it could take a Vodafone 3G dongle as it's internet connection..... oh wait.... I see what they did there.
Still, might be some use hung out of an upstairs window connected to a 3G router.
... there is no way of getting around the fact that this costs 160 quid for tenous benefits especially when you take out the ignorance of the reporter talking of "Unlimited" data packages... just where have you been for the last 5 years and why haven't you seen ALL the reg articles about exactly this issue.
If you use 3G for the laptop you have a max speed of 7.2Mbps.
If you use WiFi the Max Speed is over 100Mbps.
The WiFi is definitely free to your own LAN and no extra on Broadband. Can you say the same of 3G?
The latency of WiFi here is < 2ms. The minimum latency of 3G to your own broadband router is over 70ms
There is NO good reason to get one of these other than you have poor or no coverage on a 3G only device.
Nope, I don't get it. Why would I want to take my nice, solid 8meg connection and then plug a box into it so I could connect to it using something that can currently get to somewhere a shade over 7meg, assuming the wind's in the right direction and the portents auger well?
Oh, and that 8meg connection has unlimited data use rather than "unlimited" data use.
Never mind that I might want to talk to something else on my own network, which runs at speeds somewhere considerably north of the wildest dreams of 3G.
I'm sure that some of these will get installed, in exactly the same way that I'm sure that there are sad beggars out there who reckon that the line "I've got a femtocell" is so likely to snap knicker elastic that it's worth 160 quid.
I have a very poor Vodafone signal at home so using my phone for voice calls is very difficult. I'm on call once a month, this will mean that I won't have to leave my phone balanced on the windowsill and will actually be able to take calls and talk to lusers properly.
I'll be getting one.
Considering my O2-provided unlimited data plan says that I can't use the connection for streaming media, P2P or tethering, it's completely useless compared to wifi.
Last time I saw, their hideously expensive PC data packages also said you couldn't use streaming media or P2P.
Why do you most of you think it's for data? I will have one of these as soon as i can get one. Why? Because i live in the middle of nowhere, mobile coverage is poor on all the networks, but my Vodafone just about copes, i miss lots of calls because of the patchy coverage (therefore i miss potential business) but i do have a 5.5Mbps broadband connection. This femtocell will mean i dont miss any more incoming calls. That's why it is an excellent thing and i want one.
You may have tested them, but you're on the pay role. Bugger off!
"Firstly something people havent mentioned is that the battery life on your mobile is much better with a femto in the house"
Your in the house... who cares... plug it in!
"Now Im at home I get crystal clear phone calls, and high speed data making the phone apps far more usable."
Clear phone call's ill give you. That's the only bonus i see from these devices.
Phone apps??? turn on you PC/Mac/laptop/netbook
"In fact on both my N95 and iPhone data via Femto 3G is quicker than using wifi"
How is that when you rely on the very same source of data (broadband connection)? If your phone is accessing data faster on 3g than Wi-Fi, look for a different handset. Then stop being a tool and use a computer because just like the charging issue... YOUR AT HOME!
"I think you can get something else that lets you use the phone indoors, I can't remember, but I think they're called landlines and use wires."
Yes genius well done. Provided you tell anyone planning on calling on your mobile to call back on the land line. Something I have to do just about every time. If you are lucky enough to have enough reception to get the call through.
I would happily pay £160 to get consistant quality calls.
Before I left the UK last year, I was living in a flat that had dodgy Vodafone coverage. I had had a Vodafone phone since 1995, and was perfectly happy with the service I had. Unfortunately, the reception was unusable in my flat, so I switched to T-Mobile. And for those people (like Dave 142) who ask about landlines, I like to give me friends (and work colleagues for that matter) a single number on which to contact me. Because I give out that number, I know that any call to my landline is spam, so I leave the ringer off. All the landline got used for was broadband connectivity and phoning out for takeaways.
These days my landline has 1 extra use. My Skype number (which is the number I give to everyone still in the UK) calls both my mobile and my landline. So I only answer the landline if my mobile is ringing at the same time.
Emergency service location is based on IP address.
In my case the IP address is listed as assigned to a router in Fareham which is owned by my ISP and is a good 200 miles south of me so thats not gonna work is it.
WI-FI, 3G is rubbish for data transfer anyway so the only benefit would be phone coverage and I would be paying twice as I use a decent non mass market ISP that invests in its network, not like your <insert ISP name here> of this world that overtax their hardware and upstream connections and then introduce traffic management to cripple what customers can do with a connection they are paying a good amount of their hard earned for.
Start letting people use their 3g signals more usefully over the existing infrastructure, like tethering to use your "unlimited data plan" without additional fees of £10 or more - also stop putting pressure on mobile app stores to not approve applications that use high bandwidths and we might get so used to using 3g that we will want it in the home.
Infact (and I'm looking at tmobile, orange and o2 here) stop treating us like money-secreting meat sacks - and we may just decide to start using your hardware in our homes to further your network coverage...
<dodgy_analogy>
Right now, it just feels like a bus company asking you to pay them to drive your own car on public roads - but only along their specified bus routes at the designated times.
</dodgy_analogy>
I have no coverage within a mile or so of my home. I do have a landline, but I might want to only give one phone number to people, so that they can get me anytime.
And I know I can do call forwarding, but that costs. I suppose the question is whether it will cost more than the ~£5 a month that Vodaphone are after for contract customers.
It would also be nice for me not to have to leave the house and drive for 5 minutes so that I can get on the network because I forgot to turn on the call forwarding before I got home...
Wonder when we'll start growing cauliflowers on our heads due to all the EM in the air. I don't think that day is too far off.
I think that there will be enough energy "in the air" to charge all my devices' batteries!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging
I am sure someone somewhere has thought of this...
its not really ubiquitous if it relies on every indoor / underground building or rural area all having specialised equipment and an existing (non ubiquitous) broadband connection that uses - your words here - messy things like IP addresses (gasp!) AND private individuals and businesses alike will be paying twice for the pleasure.
Behave.
Effective and standards compliant transmission and receipt of data to and from a user is the network operator's problem and responsibility, not ours.
If Vodaphone are convinced that this is the way toward a seamless future network, then they should be picking up the tab.
Its yet another fragmented vendor-locked-in solution to a problem that is better addressed by the industry as a whole.
</rant>
This sounds like a brilliant idea FOR VODAFONE !
They'll be able to claim better coverage to prospective customers and instead of having to spend money to get that coverage, they'll make money. £160 for every little bit of extra coverage and that's not counting the extra they'll save by not having to increase the infrastructure costs to carry the calls and data. The customers will be paying both Vodafone and their ISP for that.
Well done Vodafone for a stunningly good business proposition, for yourselves.
To anyone else who takes them up on this I hope it's because no carrier covers where you live at all or you're using it from another country via VPN to keep your calls routed through the UK; otherwise you're an idiot !
Why would anyone use a mobile phone at home when there's a perfectly good (read: dirt cheap) alternative sticking out of the wall? It seems like a hell of a lot better option than a mobile phone company providing poor service then charging customers extra to make it reliable.
I can't comment about U.K. conditions, but, I see plenty of use for these devices here in Australia.
For instance, my mobile phone has no connection in or around my home, in fact I have to travel 5 kms. before I pick up a connection. Consequently I don't give my mobile phone number to anyone as they have the annoying habit of calling it and expecting an answer.
Installing a base station at home will allow me to actually use what I pay for.
I do wonder however, if these femtocells will actually do anything without a back haul.
For instance, if I live in the back of beyond hundreds of kms. from any cell tower and have a femtocell, would it allow me and my hypothetical neighbour (conveniently within range) to speak to each other mobile phone to mobile phone without connecting to a service provider's network at all?
Couldn't you use the modem in a smartphone (WM, Android, iPhone, that sort of thing) and some clever software to make it declare itself as a base-station? A modem's a modem, surely the phone end of the link could be tricked into appearing as a base station?
Your non-smartphone could connect to the smartphone which would establish a simple point-to-point link with it and dial out using VOIP to the intended recipient. No mobile phone charge as the network wouldn't be aware of the call and you could connect over WiFi, Bluetooth- even IR if you didn't mind some horrendous lag and custom software on the internet gateway device.
Also, isn't giving people physical access to the devices doing the security a really bad idea? Give it 5 years, the hacking community will display a device capable of decrypting mobile phone calls without all that tedious messing about with FPGAs...
El Reg, I don't think I will see your articles in the same light again. Opinions can be anything, but dammit the facts have to be right! As an engineer who does work with WiFi and 3G radios, this article is so hopeless flawed, it's woeful.
I don't think Mr Ray fully understands the technical aspects of mobile vs wireless communication and voice vs data calls and seem to club all of them together.
Fact 1: WLAN consumes less power than 3G. A quick google check Mr Ray should have done. http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3036&p=3 Also, arguably by design, the latency on a 3G is more.
Fact 2: Consumer grade internet based services should not be used for emergency services. Relying on a internet connection for that is a bad idea, as Skype happily warns you about.
Fact 3: This is a big advantage for the operator, as their biggest fear is that users will eventually switch to VoIP services on their mobiles, making all their minutes and contracts moot. They want you to stick to GSM voice calls, and 3G/4G for your data and this is a cheap way of keeping themselves relevant.
3G uses a lot more power than your home Wifi. To put in perspective, 3G is around 150 mW, WiFi is 30 mW! Power will be dropped for femtocells making them interference prone too.
Other than the isolated cases of no coverage, for the consumer use case, there is only one useful feature. The femtocell should be able to *perfectly* switch you from GSM/3G to WiFi, with some help from your phone. For eg if you are on a VOICE call the femtocell knows both the backend connection to the operator as well as the WiFi connection and can do the perfect seamless switch. Personally i wouldn't pay £160 for that.
I can see businesses using this, with bulk minute deals from the operator for all the employees, and a £160 box to provide perfect coverage in the office, with maybe some phone extension routing too.
For me as a consumer, it's either a free box, or one *FRICKING* good plan to go with the £160.
Paris, coz she likes all the coverage she can get..
This is of great benefit ... to Vodafone - they get their network expanded at your expense. And they need to ... 3G : Always on, Sometimes connected.
They want ubiquitous 3G and this is a cheap way to get it. Since the connection is over your broadband; can you prevent someone else using your cell ? Is the broadband call datastream interceptible by you? [i.e can you listen in or monitor it ?] Or will they be running an encrypted connection over your network and broadband ? Will their connection be dynamically allocated or do they take a fixed slice of your broadband ? What about when you want to download a lot of data, will they be gobbling up your connection? If your cell is very busy, will your ISP be throttling you back ?
The cellphone companies are storing all kinds of data on calls [dates, times, cells etc.] so any dodgy calls or data going via your cell may implicate you. [Police raid at 4.00 in the morning anyone?]
How many simultaneous calls will these things support ? [probably 1, 2 or 4] You won't have any priority, so youll be pretty annoyed that you are paying for this and the rest of your neighbourhood is benefitting and you can't get on!
Will there be a contract, and do you have to guarantee to have this for, say 3 years. If you are in the sticks and the power is iffy, is there battery back up for this or is it no mains = no signal. Will you have to agree to have your broadband modem on all the time?
This is only scratching the surface; there will be lots of other questions but I'll have to do some more thinking [and it's Saturday and it's too hot so I can't be bothered right now! ]
I'm done here. I'll get my jacket - it's the one with the worn brown leather patches on the elbows.
I live in Dubai, my router is always connected over VPN to my company office in the UK. Helps me get around the Internet Blocks here in Dubai. Its expensive to call my family and freinds in the UK and for them to call me.
One 30 minute phone call to a Landline in the UK using my Vodafone UK mobile cost me 40 quid.
I'm tempted to get one of these and enjoy my 750 free minutes and unlimited texts, and let my freinds and family call me when ever the want... Would save me a fortune at times.
Lets dispell some myths and nip some rumours in the bud -
The femtocell connects to Vodafone using an IPSec tunnel so nobody will be able to intercept and listen in to your conversations over the femtocell. Also you configure it to accept connections from up to 32 numbers, any 4 of which can use the device at the same time. If someone isn't listed in your router they can't use it so nobody unauthorised will be chewing up any bandwidth.
You can't use it outside the UK as it registers the location, devices in the USA use GPS - quite how they are doing it in the UK I don't know but there will be some technical wizardry stopping it's use all over the world.
Lastly it's not meant to replace wi-fi, the frequency 3G runs at isn't the best at penetrating buildings......hence why it's been dreamed up. It's available as part of a contract so you don't have to shell out 160 notes for it, you can get one with your upgrade. Calls will be charged as you are still using the Vodafone core network and all the equipment like the authentication servers, SGSN's, Media Gateways, to name a few.
I guess I will come back and correct some more myths and misconceptions another time, it's too warm to do it now.
A battery back up won't be much use, if your power is out then your broadband router won't have any power either so no connection to the internet equals no femtocell.
For those that haven't read else where:
1) as others have noted, it provides short range in-building (yours) coverage - good for areas that don't already have it
2) only registered handsets will be able to connect to your femtocell; thus it doesn't change the /public/ coverage of the network
3) it required DSL backhaul that you provide - if you really do live in the sticks and are stll using 56kbps dialup, this isn't for you
4) yes, if you have wifi already, then your work laptop is probably going to work much better on a direct wifi connection instead of tunelling 3G over wifi. I really don't think this is goal here (which the article seems to suggest)
Forget the bit about replacing WiFi. If you're a Voda UK customer and you get 5 bars on 3G throughout your house, think yourself lucky, save £160 and move on.
If like most of us, you have to speak near a window when you arrive home, and your cell phone battery gets knackered hunting for a signal, then a femtocell may be for you.
And the more you use your cellphone instead of a landline, the more Voda will love you.
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