Telecom joins Vodafone in testing cell site for your living room

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom joins Vodafone in testing cell site for your living room

adresdendoll

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#38033 23-Jul-2009 14:55

http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/chris-keall/telecom-joins-vodafone-testing-cell-site-your-living-room

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#238345 23-Jul-2009 17:57

Quoted from the article

"The UK femtocell - called the Vodafone Access Gateway - costs 160 pounds ($NZ386) to buy outright, or arrive free with mobile plans costing from 15 pounds ($NZ36) a month"

O_O

A little back story here for why I find this price shockingly low.

I used to work as a mobile rep at Telecom 123 , Blended Queue which include Mobile Helpdesk.

I looked up the price for a mobile phone repeater site many a time and the cheapest I could find was $1200.

Granted this isn't *exactly* the same thing but it could possibly help out people on the edge of the mobile coverage get a little bit more coverage at their house could it not ?

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sbiddle

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#238490 24-Jul-2009 04:10

You don't need any mobile coverage for these to work since they rely on a broadband connection for backhaul. They are not a signal amplifier/repeater.

freitasm

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#238555 24-Jul-2009 10:00

What surprises me is that companies don't tell the whole story. Femtocells use your broadband. So you are actually using the broadband you pay to provide extended coverage to a mobile service you pay that don't provide enough coverage.

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Se7ensyns

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#238575 24-Jul-2009 11:15

Bugger, My wife (seperated) lives in what must be the only place in johnsonville that doesnt get Telecom coverage and she doesnt have a home phone so thought this looked promising..... Ahhh maybe not.

wonderferret

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#238611 24-Jul-2009 13:29

Some form of revenue sharing scheme similar to Tomizone or Zenbu would be nice as I'm pretty sure the cell coverage will prob extend beyond your property and be used by others to fill in the gaps. 50% of the 89c per minute they charge for prepay sounds good to me :-)

Loftus

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#238710 24-Jul-2009 19:03

Wonderferret: Most Femtos include the option to create access control lists to ensure only people authorised by the owner can use the system.

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Loftus

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#238713 24-Jul-2009 19:09

freitasm: What surprises me is that companies don't tell the whole story. Femtocells use your broadband. So you are actually using the broadband you pay to provide extended coverage to a mobile service you pay that don't provide enough coverage.

The femtos backhaul connection terminates in the operators central office. Is there any reason why the usage between these points can't be zero-rated? Of course that would require some degree of co-ordination between the cellphone and broadband providers...

bbman

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#238782 24-Jul-2009 22:45

The limitations of ADSL reach and maximum no of allowed users per femtocell makes these solutions only part of the picture and really only for metro or built up areas.

I would imagine there will be some market for these however limiting a system to only 5 nominated connections makes them inpractical for businesses.

Sprint and others in the US are doing some these however in the end is the client any better off with the increased bandwidth usage on ADSL and the limited range. Most carriers there seem to simply except other options as a better way of improving short range coverage for there customers.

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sbiddle

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#238806 25-Jul-2009 01:11

wonderferret: Some form of revenue sharing scheme similar to Tomizone or Zenbu would be nice as I'm pretty sure the cell coverage will prob extend beyond your property and be used by others to fill in the gaps. 50% of the 89c per minute they charge for prepay sounds good to me :-)

That's not quite how these devices work.

There are several brands of low costs boxes (including the one VF are using) that all offer similair functionality. Typically they are limited to 4 concurrent calls and you also need to register the IMEI of the phones you are using. They are not open to any nearby phone.

Operators also have the potential to offer far cheaper rates when you make calls from home - think of it as a supercharged At Home box that can replace your home phone and give you home phone rates when inside your property.

bbman

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#238841 25-Jul-2009 09:56

This is where the femtocell will be marketed, at home calling solution. Naked DSL service for broadband and access to the network and up to 4 or 5 phones enabled for use in the house or surrounding property.

I have seen some bigger scale systems also for businesses, I guess they show great promise for some scenarios.

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Wob

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#238862 25-Jul-2009 10:48

I blogged about this in February last year, things move quickly around here!! (NOT!!?!)

I still think this is an excellent solution, especially where coverage is an issue.

Now based in Perth WA.

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freitasm

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#238865 25-Jul-2009 10:53

I got an invite to attend the demo Alcatel-Lucent is conducting here in Wellington, but I am going to be in Auckand on the day...

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#239496 27-Jul-2009 22:52

I'm quite surprised they have not done this sooner as years ago in France they've had this where when at home you pay home/landline calling rates and when out of range it switches to cellular rates via the normal cell tower.

I bet though that they'll charge some silly price for it and also force you to have a Vodafone internet connection.

ajobbins

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#239511 27-Jul-2009 23:37

Wonder if you could plug it in overseas and avoid roaming? (Assuming you had a good, low latency to NZ connection to plug it into).

Could work out quite cheap roaming in places like Asia

PenultimateHop

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#239531 28-Jul-2009 07:25

adamj: Wonder if you could plug it in overseas and avoid roaming? (Assuming you had a good, low latency to NZ connection to plug it into).

Could work out quite cheap roaming in places like Asia

Yes and no. If you try hard enough you can do anything, but two general points:

1. Femtos often have GPS units in them so that they can't be moved around (licensing reasons or because of arbitrage like you suggest, or emergency location). Moderately hard to work around.
2. Most operators restrict where the tunnel source can be - e.g. NZ Domestic IP addresses only. Easy to work around.

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