Comments on: Vodafone brings femtos to Europe

By: Femtocell market update for week of 22 June 2009 – part 1 « 3G In The Home

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:01:21 +0000

[...] Mike Roberts (Informa): “This is huge for the femtocell industry. A launch by a major operator in tough economic times shows they’re convinced there’s a strong business case for femtocells.” [...]

By: Chester

Chester — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:50:58 +0000

AK I believe anyone can buy an Access Gateway from a Vodafone shop for £160 but it will only work with registered Vodafone mobile number (I believe you can register up to four numbers).

By: Chester

Chester — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:49:18 +0000

So you pay Vodafone £160 so that they can use your broadband connection (which you pay for) to route your 3G connection so that they can charge you for it. Genius business model, I congratulate whoever came up with it. Get your customer to pay for the network kit that enhances your network, get them to pay the operating cost and then charge them to use it !!!

By: James Middleton

James Middleton — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:20:26 +0000

In the femto demos I have seen there is usually some form of authentication so the user can choose which handsets to allow onto the femto.

By: ak

ak — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:07:32 +0000

Hi,
does anyone know if ANY customer can get access to such a femto provided by VF or is it restricted to the customer ?

By: Kedar Thakar

Kedar Thakar — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:34:58 +0000

There has to be some incentive to use Femto cells at home such as free voice calls or free data as lots of people do use their mobile at home, especially in the evening and very useful to have good indoor coverage to save battery life.

I agree with Barry that unless there is incentive, why would I unplug my Wi-Fi router to plug in Femto cell?

The real application can be with enterprise, in particular SMEs. Femto can provide good indoor coverage in office and provide good customer experience.

There is clear business case for using Femto to provide coverage above and beyond 90% population coverage as it is much more cost effective.

QoS on ADSL is an issue that needs to be tackled for good customer experience.

By: Simon Saunders

Simon Saunders — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:18:23 +0000

You don’t have to unplug anything. Just plug the femtocell into your router and you can access services on your phone and laptop – simultaneously.

By: Arther

Arther — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:27:26 +0000

If I have to pay 160.. .yes, there has to be a good reason. But if its part of my contract…”free”.

I think the point that the 1st commenter misses is that for a significant group of people, when they go indoors they lose good coverage (3G and 2G) and for others there is none, yet a femto provides instant internal coverage and local, so its low power and battery saving. The US reason for deploying CDMA femto’s

For those loading movies and mp3′s local PC to Phone connection without going via the Network would be useful also (if provided).

and 160 for the ability to keep using their one phone No at home, would be worthwhile – esp as a business cost.

By: Barry

Barry — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:19:37 +0000

Why, while sitting at home, would I want to unplug my broadband connected wireless router and whack in a £160 femtocell so that I can access the internet on my phone instead of my laptop? Don’t think I’ll be investing just yet….