Femtocell Packs Wifi Router
A femtocell home cellular base station from Thomson integrates a DSL modem, a Wifi access point and four-port Ethernet router.
The company expects mobile phone providers to bundle the device with ADSL broadband access and two handsets by the end of the year.
Femtocells improve cellular coverage within homes but offer even more benefit to operators because they make more efficient use of expensive spectrum and reduce the backhaul traffic from base stations to truck routes. So femtocells are likely to pack extra features to encourage adoption.
It makes sense for mobile operators to bundle them with broadband to simplify charging as the user’s own landline is used for the backhaul.
The TG870 femtocell will cost a little more than $150 unsubsidized but the price is expected to hit around $70 as production ramps up, Thomson business development manager Jeff Land said at Cebit.
The TG870 supports 3.6Mbits/sec HSDPA and 802.11g Wifi. Next-generation femtocells shown at Mobile World Congress last month supported both Wimax and 100Mbits/sec 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) links. The 100Mbits would be shared with other users over a neighborhood base station but home femtocell users could have it to themselves.
Another selling point is that femtocells offer similar home coverage to Wifi but use only a tenth of the power needed for transmission, reassuring those who give credence to claims that the radiation is dangerous.
