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Help your cell phone feel at home

Array of options may be right call for spotty service

By Jeff Smith, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published April 27, 2008 at 8 p.m.
Updated April 28, 2008 at 7:28 a.m.

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Cell-phone reception in your house can sometimes be iffy, but new technologies, such as Sprint’s femtocells, that require high-speed Internet lines can help solve the problem.

Photo by Rocky Mountain News/iStockphoto illustration

Cell-phone reception in your house can sometimes be iffy, but new technologies, such as Sprint’s femtocells, that require high-speed Internet lines can help solve the problem.

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Trying to use your cell phone inside your house can be hit and miss.

Reception is patchy. Calls get dropped. You may not get coverage at all unless you walk out to your backyard.

New technologies offer possible remedies, although both require high-speed Internet lines at home.

One, called a femtocell, acts like a miniature cell tower, boosting reception inside a building. But it comes at a price.

Sprint was the first to offer femtocells late last year in Denver and a few other select markets through a service called Airave. Verizon Wireless said recently it plans to roll out a similar service later this year. AT&T Wireless is conducting tests.

T-Mobile, meanwhile, is focusing instead on a 9-month-old service called HotSpot@Home, which uses Wi-Fi to carry cellular phone calls inside a house. The service is cheaper but requires customers to buy a HotSpot Wi-Fi-enabled phone such as a BlackBerry Pearl or Curve.

According to research firm Gartner, 27 percent of all cell-phone minutes are used inside the home.

Yet wireless networks historically have struggled with spotty indoor coverage, depending on a building's construction and the distance to a cell tower. Rural customers are more likely to experience poor coverage, but it occurs in metro areas as well.

Carriers think that's one reason more consumers haven't "cut the cord" or eliminated their land lines altogether.

Femtocells a tough sell

Sprint's book-sized femtocell connects to a DSL or cable-Internet router. Calls are routed over the Internet.

A femtocell can pick up signals from a radius of up to 5,000 square feet inside a building. The device can work with any cell phone Sprint carries.

But the service isn't cheap.

Sprint sells the base station for $49.99 and offers unlimited service for $15 a month. Sprint spokeswoman Emmy Anderson said she couldn't divulge subscriber numbers but said the feedback from customers has been positive.

Patrick Monaghan, a senior analyst at Yankee Group, predicts consumer appeal will be limited initially.

"At this point in time, femtocells are a tough sell to the consumer because they are expensive and a stand-alone device," Monaghan said by e-mail. "Only consumers who have poor indoor service will be tempted to purchase one."

In fact, experts say a femtocell costs about $200 to make, so Sprint is heavily subsidizing the service in Denver.

Monaghan said wireless carriers including Sprint also recently undermined one of the product's benefits - unlimited minutes inside the home - by introducing $99-a-month unlimited cell-phone calling plans.

But femtocells could catch on in the future, he said.

"Femtocells should proliferate as they are integrated into other home devices such as an (Internet) modem or set-top box," Monaghan said. "They can potentially add other features that will be valuable such as logging (the time) when kids or grandma leaves the home. This could play into family (cell phone) plans or security."

Forward Concepts, an Arizona- based market research firm, projects femtocell equipment sales worldwide will hit $4.9 billion by 2012, enjoying more than double-digit annual growth along the way. It predicts North America will account for nearly one-quarter of the global market, second to Western Europe.

T-Mobile USA looks to Wi-Fi

T-Mobile International is testing femtocell technology in several countries in Western Europe. But T-Mobile USA is focusing its efforts on HotSpot@Home, a home Wi-Fi cellular-phone service.

"We chose Wi-Fi because we have significant expertise and a footprint we wanted to leverage," said Britt Wehrman, T-Mobile's director of product development.

T-Mobile has nearly 9,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in the U.S. Its HotSpot@Home is cheaper than Sprint's femtocell service, costing only $9.99 a month for unlimited service in addition to a subscriber's standard voice plan.

But the service requires a customer to have a HotSpot Wi-Fi-enabled phone. T-Mobile carries only about a half-dozen such phones but plans to increase the number to 10 by this summer. T-Mobile's offers recently ranged from a Wi-Fi-enabled Samsung T409 for free after discounts to a BlackBerry Curve for $249.99 after a discount and mail-in rebate.

Subscribers can use their Wi-Fi routers, or T-Mobile offers a wireless router that could improve the coverage. The router costs $50, but subscribers can offset the cost with a $50 mail-in rebate.

New mediums on horizon

Monaghan said he believes femtocell technology is better suited to consumers because it's "invisible in how it works with 'regular' mobile phones," while Wi-Fi requires more technical expertise and sophisticated gadgets.

T-Mobile counters that with its service, calls are switched "seamlessly" between its regular cell-phone network and its Wi-Fi hot spots.

If femtocells and Wi-Fi phone service in homes catch on, experts say they will accelerate the land-line losses experienced by traditional telcos such as Qwest Communications.

But it's unclear how popular the technologies will become and whether they will be overtaken by other technology.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission recently auctioned off wireless spectrum that's ideal for penetrating buildings. And Sprint is developing a speedy WiMax network, although initially targeting data rather than voice applications.

Said Monaghan in a report in November: "Depending on how widespread these new technologies become and what application these mediums are used for, they may eventually lead to the demise of both Wi-Fi and femtocell technologies."

Pros and cons

Cell-phone reception historically has been patchy inside homes, but carriers are beginning to offer ways to improve it. A femtocell, offered by Sprint in Denver, routes calls over the Internet. T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home uses Wi-Fi connections.

Sprint's femtocell cell-phone service

STRENGTHS

* Can work with any cell phone Sprint carries

* Seamless service, once device is properly connected to Internet router

* Ubiquitous coverage

WEAKNESSES

* Expensive - $49.99 for the device, $15 a month for the service

* Requires high-speed Internet at home

* Public awareness of the product is low.

Wi-Fi cell-phone service, such as one offered by T-Mobile

* Relatively inexpensive. T-Mobile offers a full rebate on a wireless router and charges $9.99 a month for the service on top of a standard cell-phone plan.

* Wi-Fi is a familiar technology and is in more than a third of all U.S. households for data applications.

* T-Mobile's service switches consumer calls seamlessly between Wi-Fi hot spots and T-Mobile's cell-phone network.

* A limited number of cell phones are Wi-Fi equipped, and they can be expensive, BlackBerry Pearls, for example.

* Wi-Fi is unlicensed bandwidth, and consumers may encounter signal inter- ference.

* Hardware setup is not always easy; security on networks may interfere with access.

Origin of 'femtocell'

Who coined the term femtocell (pronounced fem-toe-cell), and what does it stand for?

It apparently emerged as the "next" evolution of a picocell, which refers to a small area of cell-phone coverage, such as a few city blocks.

Since pico as a measurement is one-trillionth and femto is one-quadrillionth, femtocell was coined to describe a small picocell, or even smaller area of cell-phone coverage.

A recent blog suggests femtocell could have been coined as early as 2002 by Motorola engineers in the United Kingdom, but no one participating on the blog remembered for sure.

By 2004 or 2005, the term was being widely used at industry conferences.

How it works

A femtocell is a book-sized device that acts like a miniature cell tower and connects to a customer's Internet router. Eventually, femtocells likely will be embedded in Internet modems and set-top boxes.

A femtocell can transmit its low-powered signal throughout a house, up to an area of about 5,000 square feet.

Calls are routed over the Internet. The service can be used on any phone provided by the carrier. Data applications, such as sending a text message, also can be done.

smithje@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5155

Comments

  • April 28, 2008

    10:14 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Diff writes:

    The solution does not require Hi speed or any other service!
    You put an antenna (very small) outside and use a signal repeater inside your house. simple and very effective - this is what is being done inside may office and other commercial buildings (on a larger scale) now

    This sounds Like another way to tap you for an additional monthly fee, and take more of your money.

  • April 28, 2008

    2:16 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    action_now writes:

    With the T-Mobile hot spot, it is very much worth it. All of your talk time at home is not counted out of your minutes, so if you keep a home phone to not use minutes at home, $9.99/month is a heck of a lot less than a home phone line.