After years of being hyped up as a next generation solution to mobile phone coverage problems, femtocell technology has finally hit the Australian market in the shape of a trial being kicked off this week by the nation’s number two telco Optus.
Femtocells are small devices which customers install in their homes, connecting them in to their home broadband network. The devices then act as a small 3G mobile base station, funnelling mobile traffic back from customers’ phones through their broadband connection to their telco of choice. They have not previously been commercially sold in Australia in quantity.
Optus has dubbed its femtocell solution the ‘Optus 3G Home Zone’.
“Increasingly customers are abandoning their fixed line in favour of mobile plans which offer incredible value … as more customers use 3G mobile devices as their main service in the home or small business office, Optus has been investigating ways to ensure customers receive the best experience possible from their mobile service, both from a value and a network perspective,” said the telco’s consumer marketing director Gavin Williams, in a statement released this morning.
The femtocell devices will initially be available through select Optus stores in Sydney, Brisbane, Wollongong and the Gold Coast, and will allow four simultaneous users to ‘reliably’ make and receive calls and access 3G mobile broadband, within an approximately 30m radius from the device.
Optus has set up a portal where customers can add and remove mobile devices – so that friends, family and colleagues can access the femtocell coverage.
The telco is recommending that customers have minimum broadband speeds of 1Mbps down and 256kbps up to use the service, and it will cease to function if a customers’ broadband service is shaped or throttled down below 128kbps.
On a site set up to provide information about the service, Optus said the Home Zone device would add about 1GB of data usage to customers’ home broadband usage every month – although heavy users could use more. In addition, any data used through the femtocell – including calls and mobile broadband data — will count towards a customers’ existing mobile or mobile broadband plan.
Other limitations on the service also apply. For example, if you start a call or data download session in your Home Zone area, and then move outside it, the session will handover to Optus’ 3G network – but not the other way around. “Call/Data sessions that began outside your Home Zone’s 3G hotspot will not handover to your Home Zone unit, but will try to maintain the connection from any outside available network coverage,” said Optus on its site.
Only Optus mobile customers will be able to connect to the Home Zone unit, although the telco appeared to imply on its site that customers of other fixed broadband providers would still be able to use their Optus mobile service through the fixed line of another provider. “Please Note: If you change your Home Broadband plan or provider; you are responsible for ensuring that the new plan/service is compatible with the minimum requirements of the Home Zone device,” the site states.
Optus has unveiled a range of pricing options for the Home Zone service. If you have an existing mobile phone plan worth $79 a month or higher, for example, you can buy the device for as little as $60, or $5 per month over 12 months. Pre-paid customers can buy the device outright for $240.
It remains unclear to what extent Optus’ competitors Telstra and VHA are planning femtocell offerings to rival the solution unveiled by the Singtel subsidiary this morning.
Image credit: Optus
VHA are offering femtocells for corporate/business customers too – http://vodafone.com.au/expand
Fascinating that VHA didn’t bother to tell us that they were launching this.
That’s cos Vodafone is angry at the world.
You come across as angry at Vodafone, would you like to talk about this?
Nope. Not even a Vodafone customer.
I hope you’re not engaging in such analysis in a professional capacity.
I would jump at this for my vodafone sim, shocking reception in my house.
Why not just switch carriers? I mean, why give that company a cent of your money when it can’t deliver service to you?
Because reception is fine everywhere else except for certain parts of my house. Other than that I’m fairly happy with the voda service I get.
So a great idea would be for someone progressive like internode to offer a similar product that doesn’t care what you mobile provider is? #idbuyone.
…then which mobile provider would you connect to when outside of that zone? An imaginary Internode one?
I would assume this works by routing it through your ADSL connection back to a server somewhere then out onto the phone network.
So if a 3rd party provided the device, then you’d just need to configure it to route to the appropriate server, it wouldn’t require an Internode mobile phone service…
Yep, just an IPSEC VPN back to the carrier.
I believe that Kanunski meant that if you had a number of people in a house, one was on Vodafone, one was Optus, two on Telstra, all could connect to single box like this that wasn’t locked to a particular provider, and then of course you would connect to your normal providers network outside the house.
Not sure how difficult that would be though, but its a novel idea.
Correct Adam thats exactly what I meant.
you could probably do it… you just need Optus, Telstra and VHA to have a national roaming agreement.. so the femtocell then looks like another base station from Optus and then Telstra and VHA customers could roam onto it… I don’t think they have this agreement in place though..
+1 to this idea.
Our corporate plans are with Optus, and reception in our Melbourne office drops to zero once you walk through the front door, so this seems great.
But the lack of handover seems a little strange. “Hey, I’ll call you back – I have to walk out my front door.”
Looking at the Voda site for this, it appears it can’t do that either, hand over from network to femtocell. Might be a limitation of the tech itself
You can handover from femtocell to Optus, but not from Optus to femtocell, if that makes sense.
It’s still a great piece of tech. For example where my Uncle and Aunty live they have to put their mobile phones in a certain spot in the house to get reception. They get an OK internet connection though. So just plug one of these things in and no more reception issues.
yeah.. I saw that in other femtocell deployments around the world, no-one supports handover from the outside network to a femtocell… I heard it was due to the way the technology standards are written.. handover from femtocell to outside networks can be done though..
SMH supprisingly downbeat about femtocells
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/optus-makes-customers-pay-to-fix-its-blackspots-20110411-1da6b.html
A lot of the comments also Optus bashing and very pro Telstra. It is supprising that Telstra has a posative sheen to it after decades of being the tech whipping boy
I’ll agree this is a great piece of tech, but I can see some problems with it.
Like some people I do get poor (and often non-existent) Optus 3G coverage in and around my home, but I do get great 2G coverage, and I do have wifi, so force switching to 2G when I’m at home means I have no coverage problems for voice or data.
Even though it sits on your network the data you use on the mobile is counting towards both your internet usage and your mobile broadband usage.
This device needs to be directly connected to an internet connection, meaning it’s not feasible to take somewhere (the beach, camping, etc) for a short trip where you know there will be poor coverage before you go.
Then there’s the bit Renai alluded to above, if you’re a mobile worker heading back into your office you’re going to drop you call when you switch from 3G to the femtocell?
And the big kicker for me, maybe just maybe I can understand businesses wanting to invest in something like this, but as a home user I’m expected to pay money to fix a coverage density issue in my area?
This device needs to be directly connected to an internet connection, meaning it’s not feasible to take somewhere (the beach, camping, etc) for a short trip where you know there will be poor coverage before you go.
Of course if you could take it to these places it’d have to rely on a 3G connection itself o_O
It’s not a signal booster, its taking your signal and running it through the portals.
And the big kicker for me, maybe just maybe I can understand businesses wanting to invest in something like this, but as a home user I’m expected to pay money to fix a coverage density issue in my area?
Yes well you are getting this device to fix a coverage issue. But for some people they may not want to continue to wait for the coverage to be fixed/upgraded (it might not be ever fixed)
This device doesn’t stop you switching your phone over to wifi for data and allow it to still handle the routing of your phone calls.
Funny you should mention coverage upgrades fixes or areas that may never get fixed.
We’ve got friends of ours we live only 5 mins away but are in a gully, they get about a couple of cubic feet of mobile reception from any of the carriers, and no FTA reception.
In that case they should be able to approach their carrier and request one of these boxes, the carrier sends someone out to measure the signal levels, if deemed required the box is installed for the duration of the customers time with the carrier with the cost to them only being a refundable deposit on the health of the box.
Other people are no doubt in similar situations where due to geographical issues getting standard coverage is an issue, in those cases same thing, for the duration of the time you are with your carrier you get one of these boxes installed at the cost of a refundable deposit.
But for people living in normal suburban type areas where if you have 3G issues and 2G is available, I can’t really see it being of any use.
Also note I’m being non-carrier specific, all carriers have coverage issues in certain geographical locations, and all should be wiling to come to the table to provide a box like this when it’s not feasible for their standard coverage to reach their end customers residence.
Yeah doing it like that where its a deposit etc like you state would work best for everyone. And the people who want it to just to get better signal at home can do it.
As I stated in one of my posts up there, my Uncle and Aunty live in an area where this device would benefit them greatly
Surprised it hasn’t been mentioned or asked.
30 meters is quite a long way. Presumably any member of the public in range of your house can connect to this hotspot. What sort of data usage do they consume, particularly if a neighbour is using their 3G dongle thinking they are using an optus tower – but actually downloading GB’s per month via the neighbours DSL.
It only allows registered devices to use it.
From the article
‘Optus has set up a portal where customers can add and remove mobile devices – so that friends, family and colleagues can access the femtocell coverage.’
ah, thanks. I should learn to read more thoroughly.
Honestly they should set up a system where if you are on Optus broadband, data downloaded via the femtocell is free and any device on the optus network can access the femtocell.
I mean this is kind of pointless, whats the difference between this and a wifi modem?
I absolutely agree.
just a matter of time really.. probably making changes to their billings systems now so they are ready after the trial..
In all fairness, if they were bothering with femtocell’s, they should have released devices that were both 3G and 4G.
there’s no 4G base stations or handsets out there yet.. so prob not much help overall
So because Optus has a slow, unreliable 3G network, I need to pay money to buy a femtocell so that I can use my existing home Internet connection to improve a mobile service which I pay for. Not only that, but any data that I use over my femtocell which uses my Internet connection comes out of my phone credit. Sign me up.
every mobile operator has a slow, unreliable 3G network because that’s how we like them to build it… i.e. no big RF tower in my backyard or doorstep, thanks very much..
People are prepared to pay for a dinky wifi access point that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.. at least with the femtocell, you get a seamless user experience on your handset and the voice quality is also going to be a lot better..
Home (personal) femtocells seem like rather poor value to me – you’re using your own internet connection to compensate for the carrier’s lack of investment, and paying them for the privelege.
If you must use your own internet connection anyway, why not use services like SkypeOut and SkypeIn? Typically VoIP carriers charge less for calls then mobile carriers, and support call forwarding for when you aren’t home (and hopefully back in your mobile carrier’s coverage area).
That said, I like the idea behind VHA’s expander since it allows open access and allows visitors to your building to have continued coverage (if they happen to be on Vodafone or are happy to roam). This can compensate for the way that some office buildings seem to act like Faraday cages.
Hang on a second here, you’re taking a shot at Optus because they are selling femtocells to compensate for lack of investment, yet you’re patting VHA on the back because they are selling femtocells because some buildings act like “Faraday cages”.
Sorry, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too, both Optus and VHA are providing femtocells for the same reason, and it isn’t due to lack of investment on either side, and it isn’t to cover coverage blackspots. It’s because (as you said) that some areas due to geography or location are unable to receive coverage, and this product allows those specific locations to have coverage.
Put simply, both products from both carriers are doing the exact same thing for the exact same purpose.
Oh, and say hi to Nigel Dews for me.
Technically both devices fill the same purpose, but they are targeted at differnet sectors and have one crucial difference (from what I’ve read) – their intended place of deployment.
My understanding is that the Optus solution, being a personal one, requires you to authorise each number that can use the cell. Also, being aimed at personal use means its on your network, in which case you may as well use an alternate service that is cheaper such as like VoIP.
The VHA solution is aimed at office buildings, where the people using your femtocell usually won’t neccessarily have access to a real internet connection, or any control over the situation. In this case the building owner is taking a financial hit for the benefit of the building’s users – it becomes a service that offer.
Also in my experience, office buildings do block mobile phone signals more severely than your average house.
Are you seriously trying to argue one is better than the other because of the perceived target audience? They are the same product doing the same thing, and both could be used by either business or consumer.
Your argument is as flawed as saying you should go to store X to buy your DVD instead of store Y, because at store X you get it in a different bag. At the end of the day it’s the same product.
If the difference between the Optus & VHA products is that you need to explicitly authorize individual devices in Optus’ product, but VHA’s product implicitly works with any VHA device in range, then that’s a technical difference which (IMO) makes VHA’s offering more palatable than Optus’.
I don’t know whether that’s the case though.
Personally, if Optus (and VHA) negotiated with ISPs to make femtocell data part of the ISPs “freezone” (or whatever equivalent) then I’d be much happier with their solution.
If the difference between the Optus & VHA products is that you need to explicitly authorize individual devices in Optus’ product, but VHA’s product implicitly works with any VHA device in range, then that’s a technical difference which (IMO) makes VHA’s offering more palatable than Optus’.
That’s the key difference between the two products, and honestly why the ridicule Optus is currently receiving in the media is laughable.
Both products and going to provide increased coverage, however the VHA one does not have any ability to restrict who is connecting to it, meaning that it is by design going to cover blackspots in the coverage of the network. The Optus product does restrict who can access it, and is designed so specific users (either at home or a business) can connect to it, ie. it is not by design going to cover a network blackspot.
Really people pointing at Optus saying this device is being used to cover network blackspots should be looking at VHA, but anyways, I guess VHA is the smaller target and when has the media ever really got it right, heh ;-) (that’s excluding you of course Renai)
For comparison here’s the release details for both ..
http://www.optus.com.au/home/mobile-phones/homezone/
http://www.vodafone.com.au/business/expand/
Making femtocell data non-chaargable would make the whole prospect more palatable indeed, and in Optus’s case it should be feasible for customers who use their fixed internet services to have a concession like that made.
I wouldn’t be so confident about any cross-provider deals ever eventuating though.
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