Kiwi carriers not won over by mobile femtocells

Mobile operators are showing polite interest in femtocells, as manufacturers step up their efforts to sell them the "cellsites in a box".

But there is no indication of when they will go on sale in New Zealand.

Femtocells are mini cellsites, often the size and shape of a cable modem, that can improve mobile phone coverage in homes and businesses while taking a load off carriers' networks by using customers' broadband connections for calls and data.

French technology giant Alcatel-Lucent first demonstrated its femtocells to Telecom in March and brought more equipment and experts to New Zealand last month to make a fresh sales pitch to Telecom and Vodafone.

Alcatel-Lucent global marketing director David Swift expects Vodafone's decision to begin selling femtocells to consumers and businesses in Britain will boost confidence in the business case. Alcatel-Lucent is involved in 15 trials with other carriers around the world.

Mr Swift admits it is "early days" for selling the technology to New Zealand carriers.

Telecom Mobile voice services head Jason Foden said after Alcatel-Lucent's first demonstration in March that the results were "promising and exciting", but it was too early to say if Telecom would sell femtocells.

A spokeswoman says Telecom "continues to watch femtocell technology with interest", but has no immediate plans for commercial launch.

Vodafone UK is selling femtocells that can support four simultaneous calls for 160 (NZ$400). Customers need a 1 megabit per second broadband connection.

Its femtocells are "locked", meaning they can be used only by mobiles nominated by the customer, and not by members of the public who might be within range of the device.

In Britain, Vodafone is marketing femtocells primarily as a means of tackling coverage "blackspots" in buildings. Mr Swift says half of all mobile calls are made from homes and another 30 per cent from offices and other buildings.

In-building coverage is less of an issue in New Zealand where many homes and workplaces are made of lightweight materials and are well covered by low spectrum 3G cellsites. But Mr Swift says femtocells have other selling points.

They can provide an efficient and secure means of networking devices in the home, they could provide mobile coverage in rural areas that are outside the range of cellphone networks, and they can boost data speeds if customers otherwise had to share access to a public cellsite.

Japanese equipment giant NEC has also been demonstrating femtocells to carriers in Auckland and Wellington. Like Alcatel, it is also stressing the ability of femtocells to deliver "fixed line convergence" allowing mobiles to work as landlines when customers are at home or at their desk.

NEC says it has sold femtocells in Japan and is in trials with 17 carriers.

Wellington-based marketing manager Paul Nuttridge believes femtocells are going to be "a feature of our landscape in the near future", but it is the applications that will sell them.

One developed by NEC is Child Alert, a system that will text parents when their child's mobile phone enters or leaves the coverage area of their femtocell, telling them whether or not their child is at home.

Mr Nuttridge says femtocells could also catch on quickly with consumers and businesses if they were used by carriers to provide better rates for mobile data.

Mr Swift stresses the incentive for carriers, which he says are running out of suitable sites to install conventional cellphone towers in urban centres. Femtocells promise to free-up capacity on the towers they already have.

- © Fairfax NZ News