BBC News item about femtocells

Here is an iteresting article about femtocells on the beeb website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6916125.stm

Great potential for this device in terms of shall we say 're flashing' and using it as a GSM to Voip gateway - (rather than going through the GSM Operators billing system as they obviously intend).

Maybe the Mobile Telecos will also take the opportunity to offer GeoDID»GSM as has just happened with one of the national operators here in Portugal (www.zapp.pt) - just testing this now and find its working well - at least it makes diverting PSTN to GSM affordable at last !

Because Femtocells transmit in the GSM frequencies, I expect that the technology will need some type of safeguard against the "reflash and use how you want" approach. In addition to that, I would also expect that there would be some check on the unit to be sure "where it is" before turning on its radio. As an example, if you take a Vodaphone UK femtocell and bring it with you to the USA, it should keep its GSM radio turned off, since Vodaphone does not have the license to use the UK GSM band in the USA (nobody has that in the USA for GSM - the frequencies are different).

Even where the same frequencies are used, different operators have different licenses in different geographic regions and having small transmitters that can just go anywhere without restrictions would make a bit of a mess there.

Hi

I think that "flashing" will be not possible, These are basicly a basestation and arial ad not a gateway, The specs I looked at some time ago showed them talking directly back to the exchange. very similar to the microcells that are in use in shopping centres, tube tunnels and ships. And as the price of GSM to voip gateways are now in the low hundreds of £ the effort involved just wouldnt be worth it.
Having seen details of versions that will connect to PBXs hat then allow a call to be passed to the mobile and seamlessly roam out of the building and away down the road.

Ian