Sprint and
Verizon have been enjoying their CDMA femtocells stateside for a while now, but Vodafone becomes the first to do the honors in Europe today by launching the continent's first commercial 3G femtocell, christened the Vodafone Access Gateway. The device -- seemingly sourced from Alcatel-Lucent -- requires an in-home broadband internet connection with a minimum speed of 1Mbps. It's rumored to be capable of full HSPA, enough horsepower to feed even high-end Voda handsets with WiFi-free broadband in places around the home where reception's normally a little dicey (or absent altogether), and it'll drive up to four authorized phones with it at the same time. Anyone on a £30 monthly contract or higher can get it at no charge, but otherwise, you can expect to pay £160 (about $263) for the pleasure of building out Voda's network on its behalf. So, AT&T,
what's going on over there, guys?
[Via
Slashdot and
eWeekEurope]
posted Jul 1st 2009 10:42AM
Dang that's amazing! Absolutely free with no monthly fee if you are over £30!
ou are kidding, right? Let's forget that their charging £160 for it if you don't choose one of their special contracts and imagine you do choose one of these contracts. You're then using your own broadband connection which you pay for because vodafone don't want to upgrade their network.
It's even funnier when you consider people who don't choose a data plan then use one of these and get charged the £1 a day, or whatever vodafone data charges are, to use vodafone's 3G network that is supplied through their own broadband!
If it can be moved around to help negate roaming charges it would probably be worth the money.