Femtocells boost cell phone reception indoors

Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — A new wireless technology called femtocells could finally mean the end of crummy cell phone coverage in your home or office.

A femtocell is a toaster-size plastic box that plugs into a regular broadband Internet connection.

Once plugged in, the device emits a wireless cellular signal that’s big enough to cover most houses.

Think of it as a Wi-Fi hotspot for cell phones.

“It gives a subscriber excellent in-building cell phone coverage,” said Sanjay Bhatia, director of product line management at Plano, Texas-based Genband Inc., which makes some of the equipment that carriers use to handle femtocell calls.

“A lot of people don’t have very good coverage in their homes and in their businesses.”

Femtocells are already available to some cell users in the U.S., and the rollout could go mainstream soon.

Sprint customers can buy a femtocell for $99, plus a minimum monthly fee of $5.

And T-Mobile has released a similar concept using a different technology called dual-mode, which, instead of broadcasting a regular cell network, lets cell phones with built-in Wi-Fi chips make calls over that wireless network.

Indeed, given the proliferation of wireless Internet connections in many homes and businesses over the last few years, it would seem logical to focus on building Wi-Fi phones and letting customers use their existing wireless networks to make calls rather than establishing another wireless standard.

But advocates for femtocells point out that few phones on the market have built-in Wi-Fi, while almost any phone can run on a femtocell network. They say there are other benefits to femto, as well.

Mark Graham, senior manager of wireless systems for Samsung Mobile in Richardson, Texas, which designed the Airave femtocell that Sprint is selling, said there is some debate in the industry over Wi-Fi versus femto.

But he said carriers are leaning toward femtocells in part because they believe they can better ensure the quality of the signal.

“Femto operates on their frequency, so they have a lot more control over the perceived customer experience,” Graham said.

Security is also said to be better on a femto network, as the signal can be configured to be visible only to specific, approved devices.

Bhatia at Genband said that Wi-Fi also tends to burn through the battery on a phone faster than just using the regular cell network broadcast by a femtocell.

Femtocells will also eventually be able to offer the high-speed 3G networks used by high-end phones such as Apple’s iPhone.

Further down the road, femtocell networks could be used to connect multiple devices in a home or business.

Right now, the focus is just on getting the basic boxes into the hands of consumers.