How to Buy a Femtocell

The question of "How to Buy a Femtocell" seems to be a recurring question for our users and US mobile phone customers.  However, when you ask AT&T, Verizon and Sprint when and where you will be able to buy a femtocell they often want you to "jump through hoops" to get one.  We have published two articles that should help you understand that your carrier is thinking of themselves first and don't care about your coverage.  The bottom line is you have to be good at complaining and have documented evidence that coverage is horrible where you live.  Wireless operators just want your money and here are some ways to negotiate with Sprint & AT&T.  How to get a free Sprint 3G femtocell & How to get a free AT&T 3G MicroCell.

Sprint's femtocell Airave is available in most stores and they currently have a 2G (paid) and 3G (free) version.  Don't ask me why?   AT&T launched a 3G femtocell in 2010 and they call it the AT&T femtocell MicroCell.  It can be purchased for $150 plus a data plan.  Verizon has a femtocell that they call the Verizon Wireless Extender but it is only 2G and it sells for $250.   T-Mobile has taken a contrarian route and intends on using Wifi vs. femtocell for improving in-building coverage.  Smart move, if you ask me since Wifi is ubiquitous throughout the world and access, is free and unlicensed.  

Femtocells are available in most US cities for AT&T, Sprint & Verizon but not T-Mobile.  As competition intensifies so will free femtocells and subsidies for customers who have suffered from poor in-building coverage.  Femtocells are currently available on a geographic basis and are better off purchased at the store.  However, I expect Best Buy, Radio Shack and Amazon Wireless to get into the game soon and this will likely help educate consumers why and how they can purchase one.  

It will be interesting to see what role the cable broadband providers Cox, Comcast, Cablevision and Time Warner have in deploying femtocells since they reside on their network.  Read our post about how Cox Wireless is deploying their own mobile phone service.   Stay tuned as 2010 could be the year where the femtocell industry finally takes off.

How to Get a Free Sprint 3G Femtocell

Sprint Airave 3G EV-DO Femtocell

Sprint will apparently begin offering FREE femtocells for its "qualified customers" that have reception problems on their 3G / EV-DO phones. Sprint's new Airave femtocell now supports 3G which technically should be 3X faster (500-700 kbps kilobytes per second ) than their 2G Samsung femtocell of 150 (kbps).  The updated Airave Access Point (aka what is a femtocell?) uses a customer's broadband internet connection to route calls back to the Sprint network and is being marketed by Sprint as a mini cell tower. It covers up to 5,000 square feet and supports up to six calls simultaneously.  The Airave will be available in stores to customers with specific in-building reception issues.

Sprint 2G Airave femtocell has been around for almost 3 years since 2007 and sells for $100.  For some reason that makes no business sense, Sprint will still continue to offering its' 2G data version of Airave for $99.99, plus a required $4.99/month plus an activation fee of $10 for a single line or $20 multi-line plans.  We don't have a clue why they would continue charging for a old product other than possibly trying to avoid cannibalizing their existing customers.

Sprint is riding the data wave that AT&T creating launched their AT&T femtocell earlier this year.  Sprint seems to be doing it right and offering the device for free which is how it should be.  We are not quite sure what criteria will get you the "qualified customer" status yet but here are some ideas below that might help get you a free femtocell:

1. Find out if the Sprint 3G femtocell is available in your market.
2. Use Sprint Dead Zones Map map to share reception problems in your neighborhood (see map below)
3. Complain a lot to Sprint customer service that your home reception is poor
4. Document your dropped calls on a daily basis using your monthly bill
5. Show Sprint that you have been a customer for many years
6. Show Sprint that you have multiple Sprint phones in the house
7. Show Sprint that you have multiple subscribers in the house
8. Show Sprint that you are a Clearwire customer
9. Become friendly with your local Sprint store sales manager
10. Find out when your contract expires and use renewal as leverage

If you know of any other factors that could help influence Sprint to give you a free femtocell please submit in the comments below or email us. See our map below to build your case to the carrier and use the map to show problems in your area.

10 Funny Femtocell Product Brand Names

AT&T's New Sponsor Sudafed - "Congestion Relief for Our Network"

SudaCell - Congestion Relief for the Network

SinuCell - Relief for your Network Congestion

MicroHell - Because we know your outdoor cell coverage is actually getting worse

Wi-For-Free - Why would we want to use a free back-haul service like Wi-Fi?

Never Drop - Or we pay for the call

Extenna - Extension for your iPhone 4 antenna that won't reach the cell tower

Ubiquity - Your phone should work everywhere our coverage maps claim

Auto Re-Dial - Because we know you will have to do it at least once

Show Me the Money - Just pay us and stop complaining about your poor service quality

Cell You Crap - When your $150 + $20 Per Month AT&T MicroCell drops calls

What are femtocells?  - They are 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE or Wi-Fi wireless device that has been specifically designed for cell phones and used it is used to enhance cell phone reception indoors and lower cell phone costs at the same time.  Femtocells are typically used to relieve network congestion, dropped calls and areas that have no cell phone reception.  

VCs Betting Femtocells Will Coexist with Wifi

The femtocell industry has been waiting to take off for almost a decade due to slow adoption from the telecom industry and reluctance from cable operators innovate.  It appears as if we are about to "cross the chasm" of growth into the mainstream consumer as the "femtocell" or "microcell" topic becomes more widely understood.  There has long been a healthy debate in the telecom industry if femtocells and Wi-Fi will even coexist as Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous throughout the world and is a viable offloading option for mobile phones. However, as we have all seen by AT&T's iPhone fiasco that control over the voice network seems to be most important as data speeds and capacity get larger and larger.  It also remains to be seen if the cable operators will continue to stick to their stance that Wi-Fi is their solution and they don't intend to purchase femtocells at this time.

Two leading femtocell developers based in the UK have seem to be getting the most traction around the world with carriers and have recently announced new funding rounds.  It is great to see VC's continuing to  fund the operations of these companies who are have been slugging it out for many years.  See our list of femtocell companies funded back in 2008.

Ubiquisys, a UK-based developer of 3G femtocells, has just raised $9 million in new VC funding and a total of $57 million so far.  The new money is going to be used to meet the demand from many carriers testing across the world.  Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. led the round, and was joined by return backers Advent Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Atlas Venture. The latest round comes from a combination of 5 new investors: Continents Consulting Group (5CCG), Yasuda Enterprise Development Co., Advent Ventures , Accel Partners , and Atlas Venture. Ubiquisys, which also has Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and T-Mobile Venture Funds as strategic investors, has its femtocell technology commercially deployed at SoftBank Corp. in Japan and SFR in France through its systems integrator partner NEC Corp. Rumor has it that AT&T may be announced soon in the US as well.  Read full article on Light Reading.

PicoChip recently raised $20 million influx of funds. UK femtocell chip maker picoChip Designs Ltd. has announced that it has raised an additional $20 million in equity funding and sold 1 million femto chips. All of picoChip's existing investors participated in the latest funding round, namely Atlas Venture , Highland Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Pond Venture Partners, Rothschild, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. and Scottish Equity Partners. With the new money, picoChip wants to hire more engineers in its development centers in Bath, England and Beijing. The company plans to increase its 150-employee base by between 25 percent and 30 percent. PicoChip's has sold 1 million femtocell chips.

Forget 4G Cell Towers, Bring on Femtocells

Will Mini Cell Towers Replace Giant Cell Towers Sitting on Rooftops and Hills? 

North America, Asia and Europe carriers are still debating and dragging their feet asking whether they should deploy citywide or one consumer at a time, using femtocells.  The industry has been talking about femtocells for many years and I have been reading headlines about the launch since 2007.  Its shocking that AT&T is ONLY rolling out its' 3G fetmocell (Microcell) today and no carrier to my knowledge has a 4G femtocell yet.  Why doesn't Clearwire / Sprint have a 4G femtocell?  

There are many headlines dating back to 2008 promoting femtocell launches by Clearwire (Wimax)  GigaOm and Electronita Verizon's 4G femtocell that never happened.  Is it for real this time and should you be concerned if I owned cell phone tower real estate or an investors in American Tower, SBA Communications or Crown Castle.  

Sprint Home Cell Tower or Femtocell

Sprint will be launching a 3G femtocell, a mini cell phone tower-like device that helps you get a better voice and data signal in your home or office. It will be a faster version of the wireless carrier’s 2G Airave product, according to documents filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The new Sprint femtocell will include a radio for the 3G service and a port for a VoIP (voice-over-IP) line.

A release date for the new femtocell is unknown but expected very soon considering the FCC filing. It may cost the same $100 as the current product and is also likely to carry a $5 monthly fee. When users make calls connected to the Airave, however, the time spent won't count towards plan minutes.

Sprint’s launch comes after AT&T announced its 3G AT&T MicroCell for $150 (+$20 per month) and just as a new study indicates the femtocells could proliferate in the next few years.

A femtocell operates like your personal mini cell phone tower. You connect the router-like device to your existing broadband landline service (cable or fiber) and it provides better indoor coverage for your phone. Sprint, who has reportedly partnered with Femtocell manufacturer Airvana to deliver the new product.

Airave, their $100 femtocell device made by Samsung, has been available nationwide since August 2008. However, Airave doesn’t support 3G - merely Sprint’s CDMA network with speeds of about 150 kilobits per second. Verizon’s solution, the $250 Wireless Network Expander, uses the same network as is only 2G as well.

Femtocells could help numerous customers with coverage issues when it comes to phone calls, but most require an additional monthly fee of $5-$20 per month. In addition, vendors such as Ubiquisys recently announced that the wholesale price of a femtocell has dropped to below $100.

Its usefulness is less obvious when it comes to data transfer, since most customers who own broadband lines already use the much-faster Wi-Fi at home.

Related posts: Sprint Service Plans and Coverage Review

AT&T Customers Will Soon Be Happy

AT&T Customers "Jumping for Joy" about Microcell

Too many customers are competing for data and voice access on the same cell phone towers and this traffic needs to offloaded onto smaller broadband networks.  The success of smart phones have put data usage on a growth path that is unprecedented and. AT&T has reported an increase in network data consumption of 5000% over the last 3 years, driven by a minority of customers who own the Apple iPhone. An iPhone user consumes five times more data in a month, compared to other smartphone users and cell phone tower infrastructure can't handle the demand and data needs to be offloaded onto devices like the AT&T Microcell.

Cell Phone Tower Burning from iPhone Data Congestion

AT&T's Microcell
The media and public have finally put pressure on the big carrier to provide what it claims in its ads.  The AT&T femtocell has been in testing for almost three years and now it appears they finally have reached the tipping point where they have been forced to roll them out into the network.  AT&T is offering them on a limited basis in these locations:  North Carolina, Georgia, North San Diego, CA and Las Vegas, NV. The device promises to serve as a solution for people with poor, indoor cell coverage offloading both data and voice traffic over their network.   AT&T has also announced a LTE (Long Term Evolution) roll out to start  sometime next year and the Microcell (femtocell) will likely offload traffic from the cell towers through broadband as well.

Will Femtocells Payoff?
We think if AT&T focuses on satisfying its customers needs and overcomes the technical barriers rolling out hundreds of thousands of femtocells on their network that it will reclaim a significant advantage over competing carriers like Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile.  One think to watch is how aggressive the cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Cablevision get marketing against their customers.  It isn't clear how friendly cable companies will be routing wireless voice traffic over their broadband networks.  I predict that "he who owns the line into the home is the winner of all services".  Voice, Data, TV, Wireless

Beyond 2010 and Beyond: Is AT&T the Network to Beat?

From Geekshuilving, March 9, 2010 - Since mid 2007, when Apple launched the iPhone under an exclusive contract with AT&T, complaints have abounded about the inability of the wireless carrier’s network to handle the load. Tech related blogs regularly include complaints from customers, who either have the iPhone on AT&T or would love an iPhone but aren’t willing to switch to them. Complaints regarding lack of service, dropped calls and slow connections are mainstream topics, whose only positive outcome has been in the form of funny sketches on late night comedy shows. Read the full article. Read the full article at Geekshuiliving.com

Vodafone Will Start Advertising Femtocells

Vodafone and others soon start advertising these devices

We really thought there would be a lot more femtocells on the market here in the US by 2010 considering all of the dead zones in the US and black spots or bad patches in the UK.. There are some femtocells on the market today, but for the most part, carriers are still in "trials" and have not educated the consumer about the product.  We are pleased to see the Vodafone UK has started marketing femtocells and educating consumers and maybe even acknowledging a UK blackspots map for UK. 

It’s pretty common for mobile phone customers in Europe to get better deals than we get here in the U.S. Such is the case with a new femtocell from Vodafone called the Sure Signal pictured above. The device does what you expect a femtocell to do by routing wireless calls over your broadband connection for better signal strength.  The big difference is that Vodafone made the femtocell an attractive device by offering it to customers for a one-time fee. Vodafone users who spend £25 monthly or more on their rate plan can get the device for £120. Those who spend more can get the Sure Signal for as low as £50. No ongoing monthly fees are required and it supports up to four users at once.

Femtocells are expected to rise substantially over the coming years as a growing number of operators start deploying the devices to increase capacity and coverage in their networks, industry organization Femto Forum said Tuesday. At a briefing at the ongoing World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, the non-profit organization's chairman Simon Saunders said increased mobile spectrum and new efficient network standards like Long Term Evolution will not in themselves be enough to meet the explosion in mobile data generated by smartphones and laptops. Femtocells, essentially minimal base stations about the size of a small shoebox that cover an area of some 10,000 square feet, will increasingly be deployed in homes, offices and busy city environments to help offload the networks, Saunders said.

According to projections from analysis firm Informa, some 49 million femtocells will be deployed by 2014, he added. A few big operators including Vodafone Group Plc (VOD) and AT&T Inc (T) have recently started deploying femtocells, according to Sanjeev Verma, founder of U.S.-based femtocell maker Airvana Inc. (AIRV). There are a few hundred thousand femtocells in use worldwide, he said in an interview Tuesday but added that the number should rise sharply as Vodafone and others soon start advertising the devices.

Operators are interested in femtocells because they improve coverage in indoor environments and boost network capacity, said Verma. He said they also allow some applications for home environments, like synchronizing electronic devices over the network. A typical femtocell costs around $100-$200, Verma said, but added that operators will probably offer them to consumers at a subsidized price, much like they currently do with mobile phones.

In a separate keynote speech Tuesday, Guo Ping, Chief Science Officer at Chinese network equipment vendor Huawei Technologies Co, said limited bandwidth is an important challenge for the telecom industry. Telecom firms can meet capacity demands by rolling out faster technology standards like Long Term Evolution, gaining access to more spectrum, and building solutions for increased coverage in hot spots, he said.

List of Femtocell Manufacturers

The combined list of femtocell manufactures have raised approximately $270M from various VCs and strategic investors over the last 2 years.  This list was compiled using Crunch Base numbers as well as news articles.  My biggest concern for these companies is the lack of consumer awareness that the companies and their products have in the marketplace.  How many consumers have heard of any of these companies below discussed in the media or know what a femtocell is?  The answer is virtually zero.

• Airvana: $83 million (AIRV) IPO and now going private for $530M purchased by 72 Mobile Holdings, S.A.C. Capital and Blackstone Group
• Vanu: $32 million Norwest, Charles River, Tata
• PicoChip: $31 million AT&T, Intel, Highland, Atlas, Samsung
• RadioFrame: $28 million Eastven, Vantage Point, Ignition, Samsung 
• Tatara: $26 million Highland, North Bridge
• Ubiquisys: $25 million from Accel, Atlas and Google & T-Ventures 
• Kineto: $15.5 million round from Venrock, SutterHill, Oak, Motorola & NEC
• Percello: $12 million Granite, T-Venture, Vertex
• AirWalk: $10 million TL Ventures, Seven Rosen, Nedelco
• ip.access: $10 million Scottish Equity, ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm

For the last two years I have noticed a pattern of frustration from executives at these companies who vent their frustration having to sell their femtocells through the carrier channels.  It troubles me that all of these companies continue rely on incompetent marketers (the carriers) to sell their products and educate consumers that they exist.  Cannibalization of your customers marketing just might be the only way to get ahead in business.   I strongly suggesting that each of these companies will need to "steal a page from the Google Nexus One Phone" and start doing some demand side research of who needs the product and where.  Its obvious that the carriers have very little financial incentive to push femtocells to their customers for fear of cannibalizing their existing businesses.  Yes I am suggesting that femtocell marketing executives start thinking like Cannibal Lecter in order to make their companies successful. Sometimes cannibalization of your own customers is the only way to succeed and rise about the crowd.

Femtocell Companies Funded In 2008

The femtocell market has seen a few large investments in recent months, showing that the industry has strong market potential and there are lots of home and commercial dead zones to fix. Prominent players (e.g. Airvana, Ticker: AIRV IPO in July of 2007 for $60M, picoChip $27M, Ubiquisys ($25M) were funded in 2007, the emerging industry appears to be reasonably well capitalized for the turbulent times ahead and growth. Investors are hoping for more commercial deployments of femtocells during the next 12 months, setting the stage for mass market deployments during 2010. Here are a few companies that were successful at raising money in 2008.

October 2008 - Kineto Wireless $15.5M, which includes substantial amounts from NEC and Motorola.

September 2008 - Percello raised $12M to fund development of their femtocell chipset, bringing to $18M the total investment raised.

August 2008 - RadioFrame raised $26M to expand their picocell and femtocell range, bringing investment up to $100M since 2001.

May 2008 - Qualcomm and other venture capitalists invested an undisclosed amount in ip.access

January 2008 - Airwalk received $10M

Updated list from 3G in Home Blog

• Airvana: IPO
• AirWalk: $10 m
• ip.access: strategic investment from ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm
• Kineto: $15.5 million round including Motorola & strategic investment from NEC
• Percello: $12 million
• picoChip: strategic investment from Samsung
• RadioFrame: $28 million
• Tatara: $6.5 million
• Vanu: $32 million
• Ubiquisys: $25 million round including VC money and Google as a strategic investor; further strategic investment from T-Ventures.

DeadCellZones.com sits in a unique position based on our brand recognition and utility to educate the market about femtocell technology as control of in-building-coverage is suddenly in the hands of consumers and not carriers any longer. The masses are still not very familiar with the technology but its starting to trickle down to early adopters and we hope to provide a source of information for these companies where the coverage pain exists.