A Femtocell Experience in the UK

Andrew Gill had his virgin Femtocell experience, and it didn’t sound very glowing.

My experience overall with mobile shops in the UK as been surprisingly better than in the USA, however there is a big knowledge gap when it comes to the very latest technology.

I have the same feeling when flying through the USA airports when it comes to the baggage screeners. When I carry the latest and greatest and most of all newest technology my bag always gets hand examined. It seems the newer boards and chips throw them off, as do DVD’s, not the players, but the discs.

But back to Andrew’s post. What I don’t understand though is why any broadband operator selling mobile services in the USA or with a VoIP offering would want the Femtocell hanging off their network without some form of compensation.

Comments

[Curtis Carmack]

I don't think most broadband operators will care all that much. In the consumer space, the amount of bandwidth consumed is so small as to make no real difference to usage patterns (assuming folks use WiFi for data, and the femto for voice/text, as is likely given the prevalence of WiFi and the dearth of cheap 3G connectivity devices). If they were to press for compensation, then what they're really doing is again trying to control what devices and traffic can be used on their network, which will be about as successful as trying to stop VoIP traffic (which is what this will amount to) -- this type of "traffic management" may be illegal under the current FCC view, and is certainly viewed with great hostility by consumers.

In the business space, there is rarely any question about what you do with your bandwidth. In any event, for those broadband operators that also operate mobile services, they should be actively promoting their own femto solution for offices to overcome the lousy reception.

[Celio]

Would this work as T-mobiles UMA while you are abroad?
Sounds interesting.

[8KaboveMSL]

I'm sure no operator wants it, seems difficult to stop if the user has a motivation - like using the phone in wi-fi mode (on the same network) only gives you 15 minutes of battery life. . .