Update January 2010: Vodafone has updated their marketing name for this product and it is now called Vodafone Sure Signal. They have started to heavily promote it around London on the tube and in other outdoor locations. This post was first published in July 2009 just after it launched. Since then it has pretty much worked without skipping a beat in my basement flat in central London. My advice – if you are on Vodafone with poor 3G signal (or thinking of switching to Vodafone) AND have an unlimited/generous broadband plan – go grab one!
Ever the innovator, I have become one of the first people in Europe to have a commercially available femtocell (indoor 3G base station) in my home here in London. Vodafone has just released their “Vodafone Access Gateway” product which is essentially a very low power 3G/HSDPA base station which connects to your standard broadband connection.
If you or your family are with Vodafone (it does not work with Vodafone MVNO customers on BT or Talk mobile), then they will get improved 3G coverage when close to the access gateway.
Quoting from the Vodafone website:
“The Vodafone Access Gateway service gives you a great 3G signal throughout your home, no matter where you live. All you need is a broadband line and the Gateway – a clever little box that’s simple to install.
You can even connect family and friends to the Gateway, as long as they’re with Vodafone. And up to four people can use it at once. So everyone gets the same great signal.”
The reason it is also called a femtocell is that the word femto means 10−15 or 0.000000000000001 ie – something VERY small – and this refers to the size of the 3G cell.
The femtocell has a lower signal than a WiFi home hub, and in tests in my home the WiFi signal travels further than the femtocell signal.
I have been following the commercial deployment of femtocells for some time, from when I was selling “home zone” style services based on location and was often asked about the differences between femtocells and what I was selling.
It is interesting to note that for the Vodafone UK launch, none of the UK based femto manufacturers such as ip.access or Ubiquisys were chosen for the home hardware. My femtocell is manufactured by Sagem.
Setting it up is straight forward, but you need to be patient as nothing actually happens or appears to be happening for about 24 hours.
This is the procedure I followed once I had the device at home.
1. Go to www.vodafone.com/gateway and register the gateway where you need to tell them your name, address, mobile number and the 15 digit gateway serial number. Here you can also enter the Vodafone mobile numbers you would like to share the gateway with (the gateway will only work with Vodafone mobiles – not MVNOs such as BT and Talk mobile that use Vodafone).
2. Plug in the access gateway to the mains and a spare ethernet port on your home router.
3. WAIT. The lights will flash and the top power light will flash (the instructions say this indicates an error) for a long time. In my case it was around 18 hours. Then the lights will flash different sequences for some time. You will know you are on the home stretch when the top light is steady green and the next one down (@) is flashing (means attempting to connect to Vodafone).
4. An email will arrive to the address you provided during registration saying it will be ready in 24 hours (an SMS will also be sent to the mobiles you granted access in step 1). Actually – it worked from the time the email arrived.
Why did I get an access gateway?
I live in a basement flat in an old Victorian home in central London. As such, the mobile coverage in my house is poor or non existent on all networks. If I do manage to receive a call while home, I have to move to the windows to make any sense to the caller.
During the run up to the commercial deployment of femtocells, there has been a lot of debate – much of it intelligently led by Dean Bubley over at disruptive wireless on the commercial benefits and applications for femtocells.
The femtocell does work as advertised and the calls made on it seem clear. Downloading a YouTube video to my laptop using my HSDPA card, I was experiencing 1.2 Mb/s speeds – so it is HSDPA.
Other uses of femtocells have yet to be proven, such as sharing music files locally via the home network, and with many handsets now having WiFi, this may not appear as the main reason for getting one. Home tariffs via femtocell are unlikely to be widespread as most operators have gone to a flat rate structure for voice and data, and even O2’s favourite place allows calls from a whole postcode without needing a femtocell to check you’re home.
My advice is if you are on Vodafone, have poor reception and an unlimited broadband plan then go and grab one. Hopefully your experience will be smoother than mine.
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35 Comments
Is it possible to set up the femtocell to accept calls from any Voda mobile, not just a selected few?
- Zed
Zed, At the moment it looks like you have to enter up to 30 Vodafone mobile numbers when you register (another reader emailed me to say this is a manual process so no idea how you modify the numbers) so it restricts it to a closed group – not all voda mobiles.
Dean, the 1.2Mb/s limit is actually a limitation of my Sony Vaio embedded HSDPA card – the fastest it has ever run is 1.2MB/s outdoors and I got 1.4MB/s next to the femto – so it doesn’t seem speed limited – my laptop is the bottleneck.
This comment was originally posted on Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless
It’s not clear to me what the charges are when using the gateway. From here: http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/latest-deals/gateway-offers it would seem that, other than unlimited data, there is no discount (or, e.g., unlimited calling) when calling from the gateway. So it would seem that gateway users are, in effect, paying Vodafone for the privilege of filling in their cold spots.
This comment was originally posted on WirelessMoves
Can I move the femtocell from one location to another? Is it possible for vodafone to detect the change in location?
Ali, while technically you can probably move it, the Femtocell must interact with the local 3G network to minimise interference and integrate with local cells. This is why during the registration process they ask you for your address and floor level. More importantly, an emergency call to 999/112 needs to know where you are. If you call for an emergency and the femtocell is registered elsewhere then it will mean the emergency services cannot find you. For this reason, if you need to move the Femtocell to a new location you MUST call Vodafone to re-provision it – this is in your interests and also to make sure it works properly.
I’m still unconvinced by femtocells. Why would I use it at home for data in preference to my home wifi (which pretty uch all modern laptops come with as standard)? And if thats the case and its only for improved voice quality, I dont see the economics of it working out?
I dont want to pay for something that I can do with other equipment already within reach at home. I also would want to avoid using things that use up my ISP data quotas. So then are the operators going to get into the ISP business to avoid this becoming an issue?
Then will they give away the boxes "free" as part of a 12 month package like other ISPs and wireless routers?
Why do I need one? And if I dont need one, I dont see the aethereal "must have" reason providing a nagging pull to make me want one.
I might be interested if they were available like BT FON where I donate access to my femto if I can use others femtos while I’m out and about, or if I can get money off by allowing it to be used in such a fashion?
To me, so far, this is a technology waiting for a problem to solve to give it a reason to exist. Rather than as a solution to an existing problem?
This comment was originally posted on Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless
Hi Ali,
good questions but I can’t give you the answers to them, you have to ask Andrew.
Kind regards,
Martin
This comment was originally posted on WirelessMoves
I heard from the SAGEM product manager (who manufacture this device for Alcatel Lucent) that this particular femtocell model can operate at speeds of up to 6Mbit/s download and 1Mbit/s uplink. Later models have higher data rates. Limiting factors are more likely to be mobile device (e.g. today’s prepaid USB dongles from Vodafone are 3Mbit/s max) and wireline broadband link speed.
Currently all Vodafone femtocells operate using a "white list" and so only those pre-registered mobiles/handsets can use the box.
This initial offer is primarily focussed on domestic customers, especially high revenue/value ones, who want better coverage for voice at home. Poor coverage remains one of the main reasons for churn in today’s networks and it’s not cost effective to provide 100% coverage via the macro network.
This comment was originally posted on Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless
When I was working at 3, we did interesting tests with multiple femto cells in adjacent flats.
Due to radio interference between adjacent femto cells, there is an are of no coverage in either flat. So if you happen to sit on that area with your laptop or phone, you won’t have any coverage or very poor coverage, leading to bad customer experience.
Also, QoS is an issue when operator like Vodafone doesn’t control the ISP.
The backhaul is always the limited factor for user throughout. It is an issue with HSDPA networks for all operators as backhaul is expensive, specially leased circuits.
I also believe that the business case for Femto is good for indoor coverage for SMEs or providing coverage in homes outside the 95% population coverage area. This is where economics makes sense for Femtos.
This comment was originally posted on Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless
Hi Andrew, thanks for the very interesting review. I’m a newbie so please bear with me with some basic questions:
- So the femtocell is basically just there to provide coverage and 3G signal?
- The actual voice and data both in uplink and downlink goes over the DSL line?
- If you are making a phone call and the call goes over the BT fixed line, is it going over the DSL network as IP or over the circuit switched line and either way who charges you?
- And as for your HSDPA. The femtocell is also merely providing you a coverage booster? Is your data going over the Vodafone network or the BT DSL network? If BT, what is in it for them?
Quite confused about the whole thing..Thanks again.
Andy, thanks for your questions – hopefully useful answers below
- So the femtocell is basically just there to provide coverage and 3G signal?
YES! It provides all the functions of a normal base station – at 3G frequencies – so voice, data, SMS, MMS email all work as per normal
- The actual voice and data both in uplink and downlink goes over the DSL line?
YES! – it uses the IP connection to send voice and data back to the Vodafone MSC using your broadband DSL line.
- If you are making a phone call and the call goes over the BT fixed line, is it going over the DSL network as IP or over the circuit switched line and either way who charges you?
The 3G Femtocell uses the IP connection – so it consumes data as you use the 3G femtocell. As such you should make sure you are on a generous or unlimited broadband plan from your ISP. So if you are using your Vodafone 3G mobile to make or receive a call AND it is connected via the Femtocell, then the call gets carried as an IP stream over your broadband DSL line – it doesn’t touch the normal fixed “voice” line – it is all digital from your phone to the femtocell to Vodafone.
- And as for your HSDPA. The femtocell is also merely providing you a coverage booster? Is your data going over the Vodafone network or the BT DSL network? If BT, what is in it for them?
if I connect my laptop via the data card via the Femtocell, then the data is actually being carried by my DSL line – so it would make more sense to use your WiFi in this case, but it can of course carry your HSDPA data traffic.
I hope this helps.
Andrew
One of the forums I was reading, someone suggested the possibility to take the femtocell to an international location and route the connection over VPN. Wondering if that is possible without being noticed by the operator?
I installed one of these last week in our office which always had terrible mobile reception. They are great, we all now get great reception in and around the office. A couple of things are annoying – they seem to be aiming for the consumer market and so the documentation doesn’t mention what ports to open on a firewall (phoning got these), and also, you cannot assign it a static IP which is also quite annoying. Other than that, it works a treat!
Those ports by the way:
NTP on UDP-123 to 212.183.133.181
NTP on UDP-123 to 212.183.133.182
Ping on ICMP-8 to 212.183.133.181
Ping on ICMP-8 to 212.183.133.182
ESP on IP-50 to 212.183.133.177
IPSEC NAT Traversal on UDP-4500 to 212.183.133.177
ISAKMP on UDP-500 to 212.183.133.177
Oh, and looking at our bandwidth graph. One call takes around 10-15kbytes/sec and 3G data (not HSDPA) goes upto around 60kbytes/sec.
James, really useful comment – thanks for the port forwarding info.
I found that on the BT Home Hub 2.0 you did not need any special port forwarding set up – this may be useful info for those that connect it at home.
Andrew
And between 150kbytes/sec and 300kbytes/sec on HSDPA.
Thanks for the article Andrew.
Being on a company wide Vodafone tariff and living in a poor coverage area, this was perfect so ordered one yesterday and it arrived today!
Waiting for the first sync up as I write.
While waiting, I was trying to see if there was any configuration interface on the device. I have found the IP from my DHCP table on the router and although it pings, there is no response from a web browser or telnet (both on the normal ports).
Anyone found any way in?!?
Guy
I don’t think there is a local web server for you to connect to – all the config stuff is done manually on the Vodafone network side.
Andrew, What is your experience when you move out of the house with your handset? Does it keep the call? And the other way around, when you go in again?
Thanks,Jan
I’d like to know how many phones can use the femto cell at the one time when not making calls. The documentation is unclear about this, as all it says 4 can make calls at the same time. Can All 30 be registered and ready to receive a call at once?
What sort of range do you think you’re getting? Full coverage of your house?
Andrew, I think all 30 could be registered and in idle mode – it’s more of an issue with bandwidth in having > 4 active calls.
The range is less than WiFi – but it is enough to give me coverage of my study which is in a basement.
Active calls outside initiated on a macrocell do not seem to be handed-in to the femtocell.
I am yet to try a call initiate on the femto and then walk outside.
Hope this helps.
Jan,
Active calls outside initiated on a macrocell do not seem to be handed-in to the femtocell.
I am yet to try a call initiate on the femto and then walk outside.
Hi Andrew, I have just read your article and subsequent comments with much interest, as our office has little or no mobile reception on any network. We are a small mews based company and use Vodafone to provide our office mobiles, but our personal phones are on a number of different networks. Do you know anyway of boosting the signal of all our mobile networks?
Hi Clare, I could have done with this as well at my old office where like you 3G coverage was poor. On the question of sharing the femtocell signal across mobile networks, unfortunately, until phone companies merge, you will need a separate femtocell for each carrier. At the moment, only Vodafone offer the device – this could be a great time to all move to Vodafone under one of their business tariffs! Just as there are separate towers in the area for different mobile networks, each femtocell will be bonded to a particular operator.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for the very interesting post/comments…
I wonder why Vodafone haven’t put one in each of their stores? They’d be staff training, set up experiences and cost savings rolled into one!
By any chance do you know if this 3G Femtocell supports inbound & outbound 3G Video Calling?
@Ali: It sure would be interesting if you could set this up abroad… I could see it being a great USP for hotels/rentals/2nd homes eg. give us your mobile number and you can make calls like you’re at home.
David, yes I understand the device supports all 3G functions including video calling (if your carriers supports this). It runs HSDPA at 2-3MB/s so should be able to handle a 384kb/s video call.
With regards to using it overseas, I doubt this would work as the femtocell does an initial setup and would sense that it has moved to a new network as it will “see” ceil sites with different MNC and MCC codes – indicating it is roaming and not on it’s home network.
Part of the femtocell’s role is to reduce local interference by blending into the frequency and network plan of the operator – and this is done during the initial setup by listening to the local cells over a period of several hours.
Hi Andrew, thanks for the article it is really interesting and the overall comments debate is great!
I am interested whether you have made a successful hand-out call, when you initiate the call on the femto and go out from the femto zone.
And the other one, what if a friend of yours makes you a visit and he is with Vodafone 3G phone as well, but not listed in the femtocell white list.
Could you both make a normal call or there are some interference issues?
Thanks in advance!
Bogdan, yet to make a handout call – will post when I have.
As for the friend visiting – they should be able to make calls as normal (except in my basement where there is no signal without the femtocell).
The femtocell’s power levels are designed to be very low so as not to cause interference issues to other 3G users.
Can anyone help with the correct settings on a BT home hub 2.0?
Willy, I have a BT home hub 2.0 and I just plugged it in without any problems. What is the error/issue you have with the Vodafone Access Gateway?
Why not give the Vodafone Access Gateway team a call on 08454 402 104.
Andrew, the problem is that it won’t connect to Vodafone. @ keeps flashing slowly. Have spoken to them and they say it’s sending signal out to them but the return isn’t getting back in. Have opened up ports 8,50,123,500 & 4500 (at least I think I have) but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. Even put the booster into a DMZ and it didn’t help. Have even tried two older routers. Still no joy. Begining to suspect the device itself.
Success! Bit more tweaking of the hub -had initially copied all the pre-configured settings and set port translation – removing that seemed to the trick. Have a long house with 2ft thick walls everywhere, could use a couple of these.
Thanks for a very informative article.
Finally taken delivery of my gateway (after a week of lost-in-transit and forgotten shipments), not entirely vodafone’s fault and got the issue resolved by their twitter contact point. As you found in-store, I got at least 2 customer service agents on the phone who didn’t know what the gateway was. We’re in September, so it’s hardly the next day anymore, which struck me as poor training.
My one complaint thus far? I can’t read the number from my gateway, as I have no site so must wait for a relative. I have the same issue with registering a contract SIM, seems more a universal constant than a specific problem. still stings, for someone who can happily reassemble his own PC, all because of a few numbers I have to wait. Ah, the injustices of life.
From what i’ve read the gateway will help tremendously though, we’re living in a converted farmhouse where the signal is otherwise worthless.
1. Ordered from Vodafone yesterday at 4pm
2. Delivered at 9am this morning
3. Plugged in to BT Home Hub and registered with Vodafone
4. All handsets working by 9.30am with no problems at all
The best £50 I’ve spent in a long while
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