Survey suggests AT&T still hard at work on femtocell offering

There are apparently sorta maybe femtocell trials already underway on AT&T -- somewhere, with somebody -- but we certainly don't have one on our hearth, and we suspect you don't either. Sprint got way out ahead of the pack on the outsource-our-infrastructure-costs-to-the-consumer trend by popping out the Airave a while back, but other carriers have failed to respond in a timely fashion, despite the pressing need to get more bars into the deepest, darkest corners of our homes and offices. For what it's worth, though, AT&T seems to still have femtocells somewhere on the front burner with surveys going out to subscribers asking whether they'd be interested in a "small, security-enabled cellular base station" they can call their own. If it were up to us, they'd get a few thousand "very interested" responses, but hey, we didn't receive the survey, now did we?

[Thanks, Andrew J.]

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 15th 2009 6:50PM]

This has been AT&T's plan for a long time now. There is nothing wrong with Femtocells, in comparison to nothing, but there is a simple -- and in my view, better -- alternative: dual-mode cellular/WiFi, such as the UMA standard deployed by T-Mobile USA, Rogers and Orange, among others. The key thing to understand is that there is nothing mutually exclusive between deploying dual-mode WiFi/cellular, and Femtocells. In other words, AT&T could at any point simply copy T-Mobile USA's approach, and then also do Femtocells at any time. Given that dual-mode WiFi/cellular using the UMA standard have been available for well over two years now, it is field-proven with millions of subscribers, and that Femtocells are not yet mass-deployed, one would think that AT&T ought to deploy dual-mode cellular/WiFi UMA as soon as possible (ideally starting over two years ago already).

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 16th 2009 12:33PM]

The path you suggest would limit the “take rate” of such a product/service. Remember, not all devices (cell phones) are WiFi enabled (last estimate was somewhere around 18%). So why spend resources on such a limited approach? A mini BSC (FEMTOCELL) is absolutely the right approach since it will be most likely compatible with 100% of their (AT&T’s) 3G devices. The only thing left to do is “GET’ER DONE”!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 16th 2009 12:45PM]

I beg to disagree. While it is true, as you say, that only 18% of cell phones now have WiFi, this percentage could easily be increased to 100% at very little cost in new handsets sold. A WiFi chip can cost less than $2, which compares to approximately $200 for a Femtocell, a 100x difference. Perhaps even more importantly, however, is that many households are multi-carrier, requiring multiple Femtocells. Perhaps the household which has phones from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others don't want to have yet another box with antennas, let alone 2 or 3. The same may be true about businesses. In the case of WiFi, it utilizes what you've already got. In the meantime, phones churn on average once a year, so after 1 year, one could expect (100%-18%/2 = 59%) of phones to be WiFi capable. Lastly, some studies appear to suggest that old phones, while theoretically able to talk to a Femtocell, may not do so well. For this reason, the industry started talking about "Femto-optimized" phones, which pulls the rug from under most of the Femtocell argument to begin with. One more thing: Carrier-specific femtocells will hurt the consumer because they won't work abroad, where I am now saving $100+ day when traveling, thanks to UMA/WiFi.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 16th 2009 1:13PM]

I would love to see AT&T copy T-Mobile's WiFi calling, but I don't think it's going to happen.

"One more thing: Carrier-specific femtocells will hurt the consumer because they won't work abroad, where I am now saving $100+ day when traveling, thanks to UMA/WiFi."

Exactly, you save $100 a day, AT&T loses $100 a day, since you don't have to buy their international roaming/data/whatever plan.

[mulda71 Posted Jan 19th 2009 9:42AM]

If AT&T does this, I'll finally buy an iphone... i have a hard time buying a phone service if it doesn't work in my own house.... Do you have to pay for the minutes used while on your own internet service?