Telstra the femtocellout as Optus says 'yes'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 11 April 2011 15:22

Opinion and Analysis

For several years now I have been asking Telstra to bring femtocells to Australia as they eliminate blackspots via existing wired broadband, as Optus put Telstra and David Thodey's claims of putting the customer first to shame by saying 'yes' to an Australian femtocell trial.

Femtocells are a way of delivering a mobile phone signal that travels over your existing wired broadband connection through a device that's quite akin to a Wi-Fi router.

Instead of sending Wi-Fi signals, it sends a 3G signal that your phone picks up with ease, as opposed to the signal from the towers that has to get through trees and buildings before it reaches your phone.

Your calls are then routed through your ADSL or cable broadband connection to the rest of the mobile network and back again.

They are used overseas to solve indoor reception issues, whether at the home or the office, and as with many technological advancements, they have taken their time to get to Australia.

Finally, however, they are here, with Optus starting an Australian trial. There are some positives and negatives to the way Optus is going about the trial, as iTWire colleague Stephen Withers points out nicely in his article 'Optus begins femtocell trial', with Optus apparently not having the grace to unmeter femtocell data usage for Optus broadband customers.

Although some are characterising this as a way for Optus' customers to pay to get better connectivity, the truth is simpler: As with GSM networks, today's 2100MHz networks don't penetrate buildings as well as Telstra's 850MHz Next G network, so if you're not with Telstra and you want better indoor connectivity, the only way to get it NOW is through a femtocell.

Already, in the US, when AT&T did the same thing, the same cries of 'the telco is making me pay' came forth, but what would you rather: no femtocell solution at all while you wait until the telco improves its network, or a femtocell solution that delivers proper indoor reception at last the moment it is plugged in?

Femtocells should be made available as close to cost as possible, although as businesses its natural that they will make pricing decisions for post-paid and pre-paid customers as they feel appropriate. Those prices range from $60 to $240, as Stephen explains in his article, depending on the type of Optus mobile customer you are.

Femtocells aren't free to manufacture, after all, even if their use would actually lighten the load on the mobile network, and the market will quickly determine whether it can bear Optus' pricing, and for how long. 

There's also the issue of supply, demand and production. More Chinese factories producing femtocells would drive the cost down, not up. 

Of course, Telstra is dismissive. In an Asher Moses article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the topic, a Telstra spokesperson is quoted as saying that: 'Femtocells are a means of compensating for poor coverage.'

Ok, Telstra - we know that Next G has the best coverage - but it's not 100% everywhere, in every single spot in your home, and Next G is not Next Gesus.

Details on page two, please read on!