There’s been a lot of talk in the industry, about something called femtocells, for a while. It’s one of those big things that gets talked about in the same way as pico-projectors, which instantly makes me try and figure out if there’s actually any point to it whatsoever. However, unlike pico projectors, in this case, I can see the point.
But first, the question you may very well be asking right about now: what is a femtocell (or, as I tend to call it, a Vimto-Cell)?
Well, basically, it’s a box you stick on your home broadband connection, and then, you can connect your mobile phone to it. Or, in other words, it’s a little mini-cell tower, that you connect to your home broadband connection, letting you route your mobile calls through your broadband network, back to back to the mobile network you use, as if you had a phone mast in your living room. And who might want such a thing?
Well, how about people whose house is in the middle of nowhere, or who live in a complete mobile dead zone (I’d say blackspot there, but I know someone in whose house NO mobile phones seem to work… honestly, it’s uncanny, you’d think I lived in the backside end of nowhere… oh wait), and thus can never get a signal in their house?
And unlike the fad-ish pico projectors, I can actually see a case for people wanting Vodafone’s SureSignal femtocells (Vimto-Cells… sorry, couldn’t help myself). It looks to be as simple to set up as a WiFi router, but unlike WiFi, it works on 3G, thus giving you your own private mobile network in your home. Oh, and of course, you decide who gets to use it, so only authorised phones can, rather than other people nicking your signal (again, like WiFi, only more secure because it presumably only lets the IMEI numbers you’ve already authorised even get near the network).
So, big kudos to Vodafone for bringing SureSignal to the UK. I can honestly see the other networks following suit, as well, because who wouldn’t get annoyed about not having a signal, if for example, they live in the backside end of nowhere?
So, next stop (and I pretty much guarantee this will happen) is sure to be some luddite scaremonger complaining that it’s killing them. You know what they’re like, and hey, since they already complain about both mobile phone masts and WiFi routers, a device that I’d best describe as “mobile phone mast that works much like a router, but for mobile phones” is really going to get them squealing…
As for me, I say chill out drink some Vimto, and enjoy yourself. I also say SureSignal rocks, and I’m dying to try it out.
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