Is a femtocell in your future?

Posted by: Chuck Bessant

A defect in a computer is called a bug. Why? In the late 1940s Admiral Grace Hopper found a moth in a relay in computer she was working on.

The first computer memory use to be called flip-flops. Why? That is how memory worked in the early days of computers – relay circuits that flipped on and off.

Disk drives: not rotating memory or a Roswell, but disk as that is what it looks like.

An 802.11n wireless device is an access point (AP), and it is called such.

Routers route or send data packets on networks and pass them to the next proper device. (Or “rooters” as our English counter-parts pronounce “router”. My terriers root around for mice, my router routes data packets, not mice.)

PC – personal computer. How an apple was associated with a computing device is as likely an association as the UNIX verb grep is to searching text; VMS had it correct with Search.

At least bugs, flip-flops, disk, AP and PC all mean something as an engineer would call them as see them - they truly describe their function in nuts and bolts terms. However, apple is to computer as femtocell is to access point base station. Femtocell - I think a better name would have been cell phone router (CPR).

I live in the rolling hills along Colorado’s Front Range making cell phone reception a bit of a challenge – the same Front Range that John said to Martha while they were plodding along in a covered wagon for hundreds of miles across Kansas and the eastern plains of Colorado only to plod up-to the mountains and state, “Screw it Martha, we’re staying right here”, and so Colorado Springs was founded at the foothills of Pikes Peak, before Zebulon Pike named it after himself, and declared it “unclimbable”. We now have the Pikes Peak Marathon where people run UP (not down) the mountain in August, our hottest and driest month, starting at a 6,500 foot elevation base to the top at 14,000+ feet. So much for being unclimbable. I’ve digressed but I’ll come back to this in a bit.

In essence, a femtocell provides a locally based “cell phone tower” device the size of a TV Guide magazine in a home or office to provide access to the cellular provider’s network via the Internet. The femtocell accepts/connects calls from/to registered cell phone numbers programmed into it just like a cell tower. The main difference is calls are connected to the cell provider over the Internet with the femtocell passing cell packets to the Internet via a local DSL or cable connection, along with the rest of the local IP Internet traffic. Packets are packets.Cell reception reflections and blockages created by the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range are no longer an issue – instant cell phone tower in your home or office.

The transmitting power associated with a femtocell is obviously much lower than a cell tower. However, it is powerful enough to handle calls in your home without interference from obstacles that can distort cell phone reception, like foothills. And, it can handle multiple cell calls at a time.

The payback for the cellular provider: the call connection to their central office (CO) to complete the call to the remote party is handled by your Internet connection, which frees up their cell tower infrastructure capacity, or helps to mitigate the need to expand their access capacity and cell towers. They also get a free ride on your Internet connection for only the fixed cost, and shared by you, of a femtocell device.

Cell towers are expensive to install, maintain and provision, not mention they typically have to lease the location on a monthly basis where the antennae or tower is installed. Femtocells: cheap and easy, no monthly reoccurring cost, no insurance, no weather related issues, repairs are cheap and easy (they send YOU a new one and YOU replace it – you are now part of their tech repair crew, without the phone pole potato digger boots that Jethro Bodine use to borrow from his Uncle Jed in “The Beverly Hillbillies”.) Maintenance and administration should be as simple as the current crop of routers (wireless and wired) for home use.

When femtocells are released later this year or early next year, they’ll be sold and registered by the cellular provider to their network, or if you are able to buy your own, will need to be approved by and registered to your cellular provider just like cable modems are today. The potential power of these little gems is amazing. Maybe you can get good Internet access but no cellular service - a femtocell has you covered.

Ideally, you’ll be able to acquire an all-in-one device to save on knots of wiring and AC adapters clogging the plug strip sockets: femtocell + DSL/cable router + 8-port 1GbE switch (listen up vendors, 8-ports are needed more than 4- or 5- port switches for today’s network access) + 802.11a/b/g/n wireless AP + a set of Ginzu knives. If you are an audiophile and have a preference for a separate amplifier, pre-amp and tuner, certainly a stand-alone femtocell device should be available too, although probably solid-state without the option for vacuum tubes that audiophiles crave.

How many cell numbers should a femtocell be able to handle: 16 would be a good number to cover the parents, kids, and office numbers, assuming they are all on the same cellular provider. Multi-cellular providers would be a probability for a later release but not too soon as cellular providers will want to GENTLY encourage users in a household to use the same cellular provider. And, if you use a femtocell, your rates should be lower as you are using less of the cellular provider’s facilities; keyword is SHOULD.

How about a 2:1 minute plan where for every prime-time minute a call is placed over a femtocell the account would be debited .5 minute (of course rounding to the next higher minute when the call is completed)? Now you’ve double your minutes if all calls are made via the femtocell. Or, would we see plans like: 3,000 Femto minutes; unlimited weekend and evenings minutes between 9PM and 6AM, and 500 minutes for all other connections for the same cost as your 1,400 minute plan? It will get a little nutty trying to know how many Femtos you’ve used v. how many cell tower minutes you’ve used.

And, the power will be low enough so neighbors can’t share a femtocell, although apartments, dorms, etc will probably work around this walled garden. Femtocells will have accounting that should fix this problem. For security, the femtocell will encrypt cell packets to/from the cellular service provider.

Applying the femtocell to a SOHO (small office/home office): Small businesses should (keyword) be able to secure excellent rates with a cellular provider (think real estate office where realtors already have a phone implanted in their brain stem ala the movie “Saturn V”), and reduce the need for POTS (plain old telephone service) lines or even VoIP (voice over IP) services, or maybe use the femotized cellular service for long-distance to bypass the metered long-distance service.

Now the cellular providers have an even better inroad to the office, as the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC or Ma Bell) loses more ground to wireless technology, with what was once their proprietary “last mile” strangle hold on phone service. As long as the Internet connection is good (2+ Mbps), who needs phone lines? And should the Internet service experience a problem, and as long as a decent cell tower is near by, there is the back-up service.

A potential hazard: ISPs might decide to block femtocell packets or restrict even more the “unlimited” number of bytes you can send/receive over your cable connection. I’m sure for more money, you'll be able to increase your “unlimited” service and available features.

Femtocells will more than likely be as common in homes and SOHOs in just a few years as the PC and “rooter” are today.

Comments

[Steve Shaw]

I read through this post waiting for a comment about T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi based service. All the benefits mentioned in the article, but rather than getting a new box, it uses the Wi-Fi you already have in your home. Improved coverage, network offload, high speed data, it's all there, but over Wi-Fi.

Plus there was a comment about pricing, rather than confusing 2:1 minutes on usage, T-Mobile offers unlimited flat rate calling in the US for $10/month when connected to Wi-Fi, and that’s any Wi-Fi, anywhere in the world, not just in your home where your femtocell is.

Or I thought there would be a comment about Sprint’s Airave service, which is based on femtocells, rumored to launch in August 2008. Sprint’s service is rumored to cost $99 up front for the femtocell, and then $4.95/month for the privilege of putting a cell tower in your house.

This is a far cry from the author’s vision of “…Femtocells: cheap and easy, no monthly recurring cost, …” Maybe other service providers will do it that way, but Sprint does not appear to be taking this path.

A femtocell may be in your future, but a Wi-Fi version is available today. www.theonlyphoneyouneed.com.

[Chuck Bessant]

Steve,
You beat me to my next entry - providers. I should have mentioned I had planned a follow-on post about service providers and their plans for femtocell and UMA services.

T-Mobile, as you mentioned, offers HotSpot service at home (or at a T-Mobile-enabled public hotspot) with a UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access or Wi-Fi) compatible cell phone, currently Blackberry Curve, Nokia 6086 or a Samsung Katalyst cell phone.

Sprint's Airave service is femtocell-centric (GSM or CDMA), and there is an upfront fee for the equipment + 5 bucks a month for the service, and you can use your exisiting Sprint cell phone. Being able to use your exisiting cell phone is a plus for femtocell.

T-Mobile's UMA plan looks interesting as you can use a POTS, cordless or cell (UMA compatible) phone at home with a T-Moble 802.11b/g wireless router (adds QoS for the VoIP packets) or add their wireless 802.11b/g AP to your router. You can also use your UMA cell phone at T-Mobile HotSpot locations. T-Mobile does give a rebate on the AP but charges $10/month rather than $5/month as does Sprint. If your cell phone isn’t on T-Mobile’s model list, you need to buy a new cell phone. Another cha-ching.

T-Mobile does pose a threat to the home VoIP providers like Lingo or Vonage with the compatibility of a POTS phone.

ATT and Verizon: not a lot of public info but plans for later this year. It is nice to see Sprint and T-Mobile out there already. T-Mobile is even running 3 minute spots on DirecTv w/DirecTv or TiVo DVRs. Infomercials delivered right to your DVR.

You’d need to evaluate whether you spend a lot of time at HotSpot locations, time at home or if you’d like a phone upgrade to see which plan works best. Do the math, see which provider is best. I’m on Verizon and have been since it was AirTouch from the 1990s. I’ve had no issues with Verizon so my motivation to switch vendors is extremely low.

Femtocell or UMA will extend the reach of cell users to areas where poor reception has been “so sad/so sorry”. I can’t fault the providers as they can’t install a cell tower for every user. Femtocell or UMA based access will provide better access and lower cost minutes. Femtocell, or even UMA, should be less costly for the provider, and some of that savings should be passed to the consumer. You can only make so many unlimited calls. Fees and new service add-ons do add-up.

I look at my cell bill and it does look high. It has four cell phones (family plan), a data card and all the features a wire-line provider charges for and I get long-distance. So yeah, it is higher than my Qwest line, but I am untethered.

I look at my Qwest home line bill and wonder what’s up with the taxes and such. “Phone service”is like $14/month, w/taxes it bumps to $24/month, w/the “bundle” of voicemail, CallerID and Message Waiting (I don’t need CW but it is the same cost with the bundle as VM and CID added seperately), and my monthly bill touches $48/month – this does not include the long-distance “access fee” to allow us to make per minute LD calls as our cell plan has enough minutes to cover LD for us.

To add to my Qwest angst, Qwest is heavily promoting their fiber service to the home. Great. They’ve been tell customers in my area that we’ll have DSL in six months – this has been a reoccuring montra for the past two years. So, I use a terrestrial wireless service as do my neighbors. The only reason I’d add DSL, is VoIP performance is better on-wire than with a terrestrial wireless VoIP service.

Apologies for my Qwest rant.

Isn’t life with choices in a free-market economy wonderful? As was said in “Charlie Wilson’s War” – “We’ll see.”

Anyone have experience with UMA or femtocell access they’d care to share?

[Rick Bouzan]

Are you interested in cell tower on rout 24 in Stoughton Ma. We are right next to the Highway