I recently got my hands on a femtocell from Vodafone. Vodafone are calling their femtocell product Sure Signal. The device basically plugs into your home broadband and broadcast a 3G signal locally in your home. You then register your SIMs by filling out a form on the Vodafone website and Vodafone allow these SIMs access to your Sure Signal.
My experience to date has been reasonably good. You cannot configure the Sure Signal and the only ports that appear to be open are port 8 for ICMP and port 4500. On power on the Sure Signal receives an IP address from your home DHCP server and then establishes an IPSEC tunnel back to Vodafone using port 4500.
Once the tunnel is up the network light on the Sure Signal stays on. Whenever you make a call the phone light on the SURE Signal lights up. That is it. Nothing more.
One thing I think is confusing is Vodafone use a red light to indicate that the box is powered on. Naturally people think this means there is a problem with the box, but no it just indicates that the device is powered on.
Also on the way from Vodafone is an online method to view your registered SIMs.
I would like to know what decision criteria is used for your phone to switch between the external 3G base station and your home femtocell. While clearly the signal strength is involved in the decision, sometimes my phone takes longer than other times to switch.
Also I have found that sometimes powering off/on the phone is the easiest way to ensure that the phone uses the femtocell. So I have gone from 1bar to 5 bars!
The big question for me, is how long will this home femtocell market last. I can see the demand for femtocells in large shopping centers/venues, where the operator has to install/own the femtocell but as a residential product I think it will be short lived. 3G-Wifi Interworking is already on the horizon with trials and tests ongoing. As most home already have Wifi, 3G-Wifi interworking makes a lot more sense.
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