Can I get a Femtocell?

I have a modern mobile phone, not tied to a provider. I have broadband with a VoIP provider. Can I buy just the Femtocell hardware and use it? Or will the public be forced to buy them with a subscription from a telephone company?

If anyone has bought one as an individual and used it, I would be very interested to hear about it.

Regards,.........Topher

I know that at least two of the recent Red Herring award winners are in that business, namely Ubiquisys and ip.access. I'm not sure whether these products backhaul via VoIP though.

If you want to use VoIP from a mobile, there are various solutions that involve loading some software on the handset, e.g. Fring, Truphone, Gizmo, Eqo, iSkoot.

Martyn,

Thanks for your reply.

I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that with a femtocell, I could continue to get the cheap calls that I currently make using my SIP provider via home broadband but with the ease of use of the mobile, its address book, its wireless range etc. I will investigate the two companies that you have kindly suggested.

Your other idea - using VoIP from my mobile - I don't understand how this works very well. Do I use my household broadband/WiFi to link to the mobile? Or do I link to the internet via my mobile companies normal process?

When using VoIP from a mobile how are the charges made? Do I have to pay my mobile company for each call? Do I have to pay a VoIP provider as well?

Best regards,...........Topher.

topher :

Martyn, Thanks for your reply. I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that with a femtocell, I could continue to get the cheap calls that I currently make using my SIP provider via home broadband but with the ease of use of the mobile, its address book, its wireless range etc. I will investigate the two companies that you have kindly suggested. Your other idea - using VoIP from my mobile - I don't understand how this works very well. Do I use my household broadband/WiFi to link to the mobile? Or do I link to the internet via my mobile companies normal process? When using VoIP from a mobile how are the charges made? Do I have to pay my mobile company for each call? Do I have to pay a VoIP provider as well? Best regards,...........Topher.

as far as i am aware there is no widespread implementation of femtocells. by the basic concept is that you would be able to use your service aggreement with the mobile operator via your own internet connection and get improved coverage than would be possible using cell towers. while the operators may give discounts on calls made via femtocells it is highly unlikely that they would allow use of third party VOIP service directly at least not on terms benificial to what may already be avialable. also an individual would require a licence to operate in GSM spectrum to use a femtocell independant of any operator in most case that would likely cost billions of dollars/euros/pounds and would not be a realistic option for anyone. the femtocell is esentially a tiny cell tower in your home/office and would fall under the same regulatory regime as the big cell towers.

it sounds like what you really want to do is use a cell phone as a cordless phone in your house via your SIP service. this can be done using some highend GSM smartphones such as the nokia N95 combined with your WiFi connection to DSL/cable internet. you may also be able to use your SIP service via a 3G data plan. check your data pricing before you go that route as it may turn out to be prohibativly expensive. the phone functionality may be slightly different than with GSM.

spg

p.s personnally i am not much of a fan of femtocells unless the operators want to install and pay for dedicated connections to the internet. to me it is all a way out of providing the coverage that we deserve via the regular cell phone towers. we end up paying twice: first we pay the phone company for the service and than have to buy the bandwidth up top just to get decent coverage. in theory it means lowers costs for the telco and so could translate to reduced charges. but i do not believe that to be the intent of the big telcos. they are looking for per user revenue growth not savings to pass along.

Dear Satphoneguy,

Thanks for your very prompt reply. I believe I now understand enough to decide to give up the femtocell idea. Thanks for your information.

I have an ATA (Linksys SPA3102) that I can use with my very old DECT cordless phone (it has a 10 number memory!). I also have a WiFi phone (Siemens Gigaset SL75 WLAN), but it is a bit unreliable.

I believe that my options are . . . .

1. Put up with what I have got. Not hard, also cheap.

2. Get the ATA going again, needs a lot of manual and forum study as I am a beginner, and it is complicated.

3. Install Fring (as suggested by martyndavies) on my mobile

4. Get a new sexy DECT phone that provides VoIP like the Siemens S675IP

I would be interested in any comments you may have.

Regards,........Topher.

topher :

Dear Satphoneguy, Thanks for your very prompt reply. I believe I now understand enough to decide to give up the femtocell idea. Thanks for your information. I have an ATA (Linksys SPA3102) that I can use with my very old DECT cordless phone (it has a 10 number memory!). I also have a WiFi phone (Siemens Gigaset SL75 WLAN), but it is a bit unreliable. I believe that my options are . . . . 1. Put up with what I have got. Not hard, also cheap. 2. Get the ATA going again, needs a lot of manual and forum study as I am a beginner, and it is complicated. 3. Install Fring (as suggested by martyndavies) on my mobile 4. Get a new sexy DECT phone that provides VoIP like the Siemens S675IP I would be interested in any comments you may have. Regards,........Topher.

if your cell phone is fring compatible it is definately a very interesting offering and free. between the ATA and a dect/voip phone the configuration will likely be about the same. although a DECT/VOIP phone may have some additional functionality.

i would suggest setting up your registraion to either fring, ATA or VOIP phone to a service such as PBXes, voxalot, or mysipswitch. you can than set up multiple SIP services, DIDs, forward calls, etc. and you will leave your phone setup once done and just change setting in the service you choose. you can also set up dialplans that can for example route calls via different SIP services based on cost to different long distance destinations. of the service i mentioned voxalot is the easiest to setup, my preference is mysipswitch. it is only slightly harder to learn but offer more functionality and has a really great forum and couple of developers who run the service all of whom will gladly help you along if you encounter difficulties.

good luck and happy calling!

spg