i3 - January/February 2016 - 12

Tech

BY MURRAY SLOVICK

A T EC H N O LO GY TO WATC H
CAN A FEMTOCELL HELP YOUR BUSINESS?

Mini Towers
Femtocells act as miniature cell phone towers that
connect to your home network router and use
your wired broadband connection to move voice
calls and data services to and from your carrier's
network over the Internet. However, femtocells
do not replace your existing broadband service.
Consider the AT&T MicroCell, which works with
broadband services such as cable, fiber or DSL
(satellite broadband is the exception). A dedicated
Ethernet port must be available on your modem or
router and the connection must support minimum
broadband speeds of 1.5Mbps downstream and
256Kbps upstream.
The signal range of the Microcell is roughly 40
feet from the base station (in all directions), giving
you about 5,000 square feet of coverage. More than
one Microcell device can be used as long as they are
not too close together. Interference between two
devices in close proximity could cause calls to drop.
The MicroCell unit, like all femtocells, includes a
GPS device that lets it identify its location and can
only be used at the address where it is registered.
This is an FCC restriction and GPS is the means
by which it is enforced. Femtocells will not work
until it has identified its location. If a femtocell
unit is moved to a new location, you must update
the device location in your account profile for the
device to function (as well as to enable 911 services). The location requirement allows the carrier
to disable femtocell operation in areas where the
carrier doesn't own the frequencies that the femto12

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

cell supports and where using the femtocell might interfere with another carrier's
network.
Because of the GPS requirement, femtocells work best when the device is within
three feet of a window where it can access
GPS satellites. One attractive feature is that
if you start a call on the MicroCell and leave
your home the call can continue uninterrupted. It will seamlessly be transferred
from the MicroCell to a standard cell tower.
Billing is based on the initial connection on
the MicroCell. Calls initiated on the standard network, however, can't be handed off to a femtocell.
Small businesses can take advantage of femtocells. Indeed, T-Mobile's 4G LTE CellSpot supports up to 16 calls at one time and works with any
3G, 4G or LTE device that is compatible with the
T-Mobile network.
Wireless providers like femtocells because they
offload to Wi-Fi networks some data originally targeted for their cellular networks freeing up bandwidth for other users. It also trims the expense that
the carriers might otherwise incur in order to expand
network capacity and/or coverage. For consumers,
using a Wi-Fi connection instead of a mobile network
can help reduce mobile data usage fees.
Signal Repeaters
An alternative to femtocells are devices known as
signal repeaters. They catch data from a cell tower
and amplify it inside a building. A repeater consists
of a directional antenna that is pointed in the direction most likely to receive a cell phone signal from a
carrier's cell tower.
A cell phone amplifier then boosts the signal
and a second antenna sends the boosted cell
phone signal to the user's phone (some repeaters do not feature separate antennas to send
and receive information). Signal repeaters from
companies such as Wi-Ex (under the brand
name ZBoost) and Wilson Electronics work
with major voice and text networks and operate
independently of the carrier. Unlike femtocells,
repeaters can't be configured to recognize specific phones.

Small
businesses
can take
advantage of
femtocells.
Courtesy Samsung

mong most people's "top 10 annoyances"
list is trying to make a call or receive data
on your cell phone only to realize you only
have one bar on your display. And it's somehow
worse when we suffer dropped calls and slow data
speeds at home. Then it becomes personal.
Happily, if this is a chronic problem for you,
AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon offer a solution. It's a small cell network called a femtocell that
uses your home or office landline or broadband
service to enhance indoor calling and data connectivity in areas where service is spotty often due to a
large number of users.

I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

http://www.att.com/att/microcell/ http://www.zboost.com/ http://www.zboost.com/ https://www.weboost.com/us/

i3 - January/February 2016

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