Vodafone Home Gateway drops in price and becomes Sure Signal

Vodafone has renamed its home femtocell system from Vodafone Home Gateway to Sure Signal while also dropping the price from £160 to £50 for a one off payment. It's also possible to rent the Sure Signal box for £5 pm.

Femtocells are an easy way for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to reduce their backhaul requirements as they create small coverage areas with the femtocell which uses the customer's broadband connection to connect back to the MNO. As the femtocells are 3G, they'll see what frequencies are available in the area and use free channels thus co-operating with whatever the MNO has there in the macro network (2G femtocells are much more complicated and require frequency planning).

Though Vodafone haven't said why they're suddenly pushing femtocells again (the Home Gateway has been poorly marketed), it is likely that it coincides with the launch of the iPhone on their network and the considerable increase in data that it produces. By being able to alleviate the 'home' data use issue, they may be successful in maintaining the overall network stability.

In future Vodafone may even give Sure Signal devices away for free (and put them in busy areas like shops etc), they may even offer 'free' calls to home users to encourage them to install the gateways.

MagicJack jacks into GSM femtocell

MagicJack (owned by YMax) say they have made a femtocell that plugs into a PC and then offers VoIP connectivity through the MagicJack network. They already manufacture a system for regular phone lines that does the same thing for fixed lines costing $40 for the MagicJack unit and $20 pa. The system is being demonstrated at CES in the US.

The femtocell detects the cell phone, connects to it and then the user enters a code to authenticate the connection. It then uses the connected PC to connect to the VoIP service.

MagicJack state this is legal as the mobile operators license doesn't extend into the home, which implies it's US only.

In the UK (and most of Europe) a license is required to transmit or receive radio signals and the MagicJack femtocell would certainly be illegal in the UK.

Sprint announced FemtoCell Airwave service

Sprint has announced its long awaited Airwave service using FemtoCells from Samsung (CDMA).

These are used in the home and utilise broadband for backhaul to Sprints network. When a user's Sprint mobile is in the vicinity of the cell it will use that instead of Sprint's main cell sites. Calls will be heavily discounted or free when in range of the femto cell.

More networks will adopt femto cells as they allow cheaper calls to be offered and high data rate services. The main issue with femto cells is they need licensed spectrum which is scarce in lots of countries.

Google invests in Ubiquisys

Ubiquisys an Oxford based company have developed a 3G femtocell (known as Zonegate) using Picochip technology.

Google have invested around $10m of their $25m B round financing.

Google have also said they are looking at investing $4.6bn in the 700MHz wireless auction in the US (if the FCC holds the auction in a manner they consider fair).

It wouldn't be suprising if Google put money into the UK 2.5GHz auction that will happen next year, they may well also invest in a UK GSM Guard band license holder.

It seems Google believe licensed spectrum is the way forwards and are implementing that strategy.