Ready to abandon your landline, but stymied by poor indoor cell reception? Two new technologies, one that lets you make calls over your home wireless network through your cell phone and another that uses tiny, inhome cell towers called femtocells are emerging to fill gaps in cell coverage. Both services make use of your broadband connection to route in-home cell phone calls over the Internet using VoIP, but they let you make and receive calls directly from your mobile handset, with your regular cell number. You can start a call indoors over broadband and continue it outside over cellular, and vice versa. According to early adopters, both systems are transparent to use and both function well.

Your Own Cell Tower
Sprint’s Airave system places a miniature cell tower, called a femtocell, in your house. The service is being tested in Denver, Indianapolis, and Nashville, and is set to roll out to the rest of the country in 2008. The Airave hooks up directly to your broadband router. When in range of the Airave, any Sprint handset will connect automatically to the device, which will then transmit calls over the Internet. As many as three handsets, from a pool of up to 50 registered or authorised phones, can make or receive calls simultaneously on a single femtocell. Additional callers are routed to the nearest cell tower.

Early adopted users report that hand offs between tower and femtocell work well and that call quality is excellent. Sprint charges US$15 per month per line for unlimited calling (US$30 for a family plan), in addition to US$50 for the Airave hardware.

The Home Hotspot
T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home went nationwide this summer. It uses hybrid handsets that switch from a cellular network to Wi-Fi when you move into range of a hotspot. But built-in Wi-Fi isn’t enough, as special circuitry must perform the hand offs between the Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Only a few handsets work with the service: Nokia’s 6086, Samsung’s t409, and RIM’s newest BlackBerry Curve. And though any Wi-Fi router will work with the service, T-Mobile sells optimized models from D-Link and Linksys that promise to provide better voice quality and to extend your handset’s battery life. (Wi-Fi is a big power eater.)

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The Sierra Wireless AirCard 875 gives your laptop the ultimate in international connectivity: I got online in Spain at speeds over 300 kilobits per second, with peaks above 650 Kbps. It works also on Cingular’s HSDPA high-speed network here at home. Beware the monthly fees, though: An international, 100MB data plan costs $139.99 a month.

The topic of municipal wireless has become a real hot button. Many communities are implementing municipal wireless, but they’re doing so for the wrong reasons. And, worse, there’s a dirty little secret about muni-wireless.

Not all municipal wireless efforts are political pork, nor are they failures. The city of Providence, R.I., for example, has done everything right. The city started out with a goal that was clearly defined, achievable, limited in scope, and that improved city services while reducing costs. Municipal wireless was implemented to make the city work more efficiently, and it does.

But a more typical approach by cities is to promise free wireless access to the masses. The reasons given are many, ranging from bridging the digital divide to promoting business in certain areas of a city. Disadvantaged kids will finally be able to do their school research online! Poor families can apply for jobs, get their GEDs or take college courses!

There’s also the picture painted of decaying city centers magically revitalized when people can use their laptops while enjoying the amenities of downtown. No doubt you can already imagine the gentle crunch of the hypodermic needles beneath your feet as you make your way to a bench so you can sit down and compute. That’s assuming you can find a bench not already occupied with a sleeping person, or not already covered by, well, something unmentionable.

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Buffalo’s Nfiniti router has all the features you need to set up a wireless network, including a built-in ADSL router and four Ethernet ports so that you can also make wireless connections if you need to. Unfortunately, the router is let down by its poor Mac support.

The set-up software provided with the Nfiniti is for PCs only, and the ‘Quick Setup’ manual doesn’t mention Macs at all. It does tell you the IP address that should allow you to connect your Mac to the router’s set-up web page, but we couldn’t get this to work on our Mac. Eventually we had to ring Buffalo’s technical support hotline before we were able to get the Nfi niti running properly.

That’s obviously not ideal, so we can’t recommend the Nfi niti to Mac users who aren’t already knowledgeable about network technology.

The Nfiniti router is primarily aimed at PC users.

You can always rely on Belkin to get its support and ease of use right, and the company will not disappoint you with the N1 router.

When you open the box there’s a very clear Quick Start brochure that leads you through the basic process of plugging the router in and getting it working properly. Even the glowing symbols on the front of the router are bigger than normal and clearly labeled so that you can see exactly what information they’re trying to convey.

It was a little careless of Belkin to slap a label on their CD that merely said ‘Windows 2000 and XP’, with no mention of the Mac. However, the installer does run on the Mac, and it quickly guides you through the process of setting up your wireless network. Belkin’s Mac-friendly approach makes this the obvious choice for Mac users who want an alternative to Apple’s own Airport products.

Belkin’s N1 router is the easiest to set up and install, click to view the details:

Lexmark’s love affair with wireless printers continues, with four new models released this month. For low price you can get the Z1520 wireless inkjet photo printer, which can print at up to 4,800 x 1,200dpi resolution. The X4850 is an all-in-one version priced also includes a scanner, memory card slots and an LCD display so you can edit photos directly on the printer.

Alternatively, for the same price you can get the X6570, which swaps the LCD display for a 25-sheet document feeder and double-sided printing. Finally, there’s the X7550, which includes both the document feeder and LCD display.

Lexmark’s wireless printers can be shared by everyone on your network, click to view product details:

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Good wireless throughput and above-average broadcast range are just two reasons why the DIR-655 should be at the top of your networking wish list. You also get four high-speed Gigabit Ethernet ports and an impressive Quality of Service (QoS) configuration tool to help you prioritize bandwidth usage for specific applications like streaming video. The DIR-655 is a touch pricier than other Draft N routers, but it’s worth it.