Vodafone has connected its first customers to the National Broadband Network, in Armidale: a move that marks its first foray into fixed network offerings. 

Vodafone has connected its first customers to the National Broadband Network, in Armidale: a move that marks its first foray into fixed network offerings. 

A decision by French mobile operator SFR to offer femtocells free to all its customers suggests that that they offer benefits for operators as much, or more so, than they offer for users.

Vodafone Germany is reported to be planning to abandon the use of copper for delivering broadband services and migrate four million broadband customers to its LTE network.

Remember when carrier operated public WiFi hotspots were all the rage? Telstra, Optus and a handful of private operators were rolling them out in coffee shops, airports and on the street. Sure every other coffee shop today has free WiFi, but the big telco-operated networks have all but disappeared. They could be about to make a comeback.

Ubiquisys - a developer of femtocells and small cellular base stations - has teamed up with Intel to develop small LTE base stations that will incorporate Intel chips to provide processing power for user applications and services.

The only scam around femtocells is the ridiculously bad media coverage that suggests that femtocells are a scam, when really they’re like a 3G Wi-Fi device for your phone’s voice, SMS and MMS capabilities.

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.

Arguably mobile customers buying femtocells are paying good money to compensate for the shortcomings in the mobile network: and the benefits for the operator go much further.

Ubiquisys - a developer of femtocells - has gone one step further with the attocell: a cellular base station designed for the iPhone that you can plug into your Internet-connected laptop anywhere in the world and connect your cellphone direct to your home operator's network.