Vodafone’s Access Gateway (femtocell) now available

By on July 1, 2009 in Devices

Are you going to be picking yourself up one of these signal-boosting Vodafone Access Gateways?

£160 to buy outright or free on a contract (or, more likely, free if you phone up and complain about genuinely patchy signal.)

You just have to plug it into your existing broadband connection. No setup. No arsing around.

I’d certainly like to try one out.

Although that said, I’ve got reasonable Vodafone signal. 3.5G data all round and about 4/6 bars.

It’d be nice to have 6/6 bars though…

Congratulations to picoChip, the suppliers of the product — their CTO Doug Pulley was, apparently, the first in the line to buy his from the Bath Vodafone shop. That’s him above!

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Ewan is Founder and Editor of Mobile Industry Review. He writes about a wide variety of industry issues and is usually active on Twitter most days. You can read more about him or reach him with these details.
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  • ashleybolser

    Good on PicoChip but isn't this paying for the privilege of the network covering your area?
    Isn't that why they exist?
    Do PicoChip do a generic base station that works for all operators and phones and that could be plugged into home broadband?
    That way I could share revenue from traffic coming over my network?
    Ash

  • Anonymous

    The only benefit of a femtocell is better coverage and lower call costs. Except Vodafone aren't doing the call charges thing. So if the benefit is only in coverage then what's the point of a 3G femtocell that can only be used by 3G phones? Why not a 2G femtocell that can be used by 2G and 3G phones?

  • ashleybolser

    Good on PicoChip but isn't this paying for the privilege of the network covering your area?
    Isn't that why they exist?
    Do PicoChip do a generic base station that works for all operators and phones and that could be plugged into home broadband?
    That way I could share revenue from traffic coming over my network?
    Ash

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