Vodafone's femtocell won't improve mobile broadband
Vodafone UK have just announced the availability of thier new "3G coverage booster", aka a 3G femtocell. This little box of tricks plugs into your home broadband connection and routes calls over the internet and onto Voda's network. This is welcome news for those of us with 3G handsets who are unable to access data services or make reliable voice calls due to poor coverage. However, it's not great news for mobile broadband users. Although it's unclear if the femtocell supports higher speed technology (HSDPA), the fact that it routes the data over your ADSL connection should be enough reason to rule it out. If you've got ADSL at home, why bother using your mobile broadband allowance when fixed line is far cheaper and faster?
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Tim (not verified) commented on Wed, 2009-07-01 21:11:
More to the point, if you are at home, why don't you just use your desktop machine?!
This is perfect for what it's designed for and that is maximising coverage for voice and video calls in homes that are a black spot. Modern smartphones have wifi so if you were at home and wanted to use data on your phone, you'd just use that surely?
MobileBroadbandRocks commented on Thu, 2009-07-02 09:00:
Thanks for the details David. Tim - I absolutely agree - this product is perfect for what it's designed for - improving handset voice and data access. I'm afraid for mobile broadband access on a laptop it's a case of the emperors new clothes. It's ridiculous to route your data over a HSPA network, tunneled over DSL - your performance will decrease due to the overheads, plus you may end up paying for your data twice (your fixed line ISP and Vodafone). There's only a couple of fringe use cases where this could be beneficial to the customer.
The key question is are Vodafone's customers loyal enough to buy an additional product just to get the service they expect in the first place? Why not change networks?
James Pitt (not verified) commented on Thu, 2009-09-10 19:41:
Sadly this does not push the boundaries of the technology and enable those with no broadband access at all (i.e. those forced to remain on dial up due to the lack of infrastructure) to use this gateway as a way of accessing a 3G network by boosting the mobile signal in poor coverage areas.
Being tied to a broadband line essentially means it is competing with BTs services that switch the mobile calls over the web, takiing not only the pressure off the mobile network but also reducing the cost of transportation of the calls and web access.
Dissappointing that the technology is not being used as a way of extending mini-cell sites in areas such as those is rural communities with little chance of being upgraded to 2mb fixed line broadband for many many years. Vodafone I think have really missed a beat here
This first version of Vodafone's Access Gateway supports HSPA peak data rates of up to 6Mbit/s downlink and 1 Mbit/s uplink. This isn't just helpful for those using broadband dongles (which many people still do even indoors at home), but will also speed up the experience on many smartphones and similar devices.
These data rates exceed the speeds of many existing HSPA devices today. The next version of this product (supplied by Alcatel Lucent) supports rates of 14Mbits down and 5Mbit/s up, and other femtocell manufacturers are already demonstrating products that achieve 21 Mbit/s. Obviously not so useful unless you have exceptionally fast broadband, but it all helps.
David
ThinkFemtocell.com