Femtocell trial: update

Well, I have placed the femtocell at a greater distance from the router - but given the limitations of where to put routers and the length of cables this is still not an ideal scenario, I would say.

I was talking to an executive from Nokia Siemens about this yesterday, and he said the spectrum filters in current femtocells are still quite poor and really need to be further refined - although this would make them more expensive initially.

I'm no engineer, but as a consumer my view is that it's not good enough to just ask consumers to locate a femtocell six feet away from their router. Sometimes that's just not always that feasible, and it's hardly user friendly. It might be OK for the early adopters to do this - but what about the mass market? I can't help but think that if femtos are to take off as a mass-market solution for indoor coverage or even data offloading then these interference issues need to be eliminated. I'm just trialling a femtocell; not sure I would buy one just yet.

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TT Makes the Shortlist

Total Telecom is delighted to have made the shortlist for this years PPA Independent Publisher Awards in the category of ONLINE BRAND OF THE YEAR.


The Independent Publisher Awards are described by the PPA (Periodical Publishers Association - one of the leading publishing trade bodies worldwide) as the ultimate accolade for the achievements of independent publishers and so Total Telecom is delighted to make the shortlist alongside two other extremely strong brands, The Moodie Report and Clash Magazine.

The winner will be revealed during the glamorous awards ceremony on Tuesday 1 December 2009 where Total Telecom will be crossing fingers that we are named ONLINE BRAND OF THE YEAR.

Watch this space!

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Femtocell trial: first impressions

Well, it works, I can make calls in my home and both mobile phones have been registered - although it took a couple of calls to get that sorted out. And I never received my confirmation SMS...

But there is one very worrying development. When my femtocell is on, my WiFi network does not work properly. The signal becomes very weak and I can't always get on the Internet. This is resolved by unplugging the femtocell...

So what's at fault here? My WiFi network, or the femtocell? I did assume the two would not interfere with one another but this is too much of a coincidence to ignore. What can I do? I have no control over where they are located as the broadband router has to be connected to both...

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Trialling femtocells

I've just started trialling a femtocell in my home. It's the Access Gateway from Vodafone UK. So far, it's great. Although I live in central London the mobile reception in my home is appalling. Now, after having registered my mobile number with the gateway, I get a strong signal indoors and all being well will never miss a mobile call or text again!

Trialling the femtocell, and thinking about how it can be used, certainly brings into perspective the conundrum faced by mobile operators with the femtocell business model. It is great for coverage indoors if like me you suffer from poor access to the macro network. But other than that, if you already have WiFi, why would you need a femtocell for anything else? Even my mobile broadband service would be no use to me if my fixed connection went down as I need the fixed broadband for the femtocell backhaul...

Home networking perhaps? Offloading traffic? Hard to see it at the moment. But an all-singing, all-dancing router with WiFi, cellular, and home networking support- now you're talking.

While installing my femtocell I also tested my broadband speed: 11 Mbps on the downlink! Way to go, Virgin Media! Shame the uplink is still below 1 Mbps though.

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