Femtos still on the sideline

In an article published this month on Fierce Wireless Europe, Paul Rasmussen writes what many in the industry already know, that femtocells are still on the sidelines.

Mr. Rasmussen quotes Ovum analyst Steven Hartley saying femtos remain to costly and complex for a mass-market coverage solution.

Speaking quite candidly, Ericsson CTO Hakan Eriksson stated "the femtocell solves no p

roblem from my viewpoint."

Pointing out the obvious, Mr. Eriksson goes on to say that "all the devices that are generating mobile data are Wi-Fi enabled."

Not a good coverage play, not a good offload play... it's no wonder Femtos remain on the sidelines.

With more than 200m Wi-Fi access points installed in the world today, it seems that Wi-Fi is the dominate in-building wireless technology.

Boosting Signal Boost

This week Kineto held an event in the UK to announce the availability of new Android smartphones with Orange’s Signal Boost service.

Signal Boost, as the name implies, uses Wi-Fi to boost the mobile signal of Orange customers when they are at home or in the office. Signal Boost was quietly introduced to the market a couple years ago, and has become key service offer.

Director of product marketing Paul Jevons said a few words about the success of the Signal Boost service. Here are some of the highlights:

• The Signal Boost customer base has grown by more than 50% in the last 6 months, carrying millions of calls every month.
• Signal Boost has “positive customer retention,” and customers say that “there is an improvement in coverage and call quality” when using the service.
• Customers appreciate Signal Boost. 50% say the Signal Boost feature influenced their handset choice, and 80% rate it as “easy to set up.”
• A “large portion” of active Signal Boost customers consider it “an essential feature.”

The event was hosted at Tutton’s in Covent Garden. Their private, underground “vault” rooms were an ideal place to highlight how Wi-Fi and Orange’s Signal Boost service can bring mobile services anywhere.

The event resulted in a lot of great coverage in Telecom TV, Total Telecom, Recombu, Pocket Lint, CNET and more.

The 0.2% Solution

At the “Path to 4G” event hosted by Fierce Wireless, and held in conjunction with the CTIA 2011 show in Orlando, Sprint’s vp of network development Iyad Tarazi disclosed that the company has 0.1 million femtocells deployed.

I think the word ‘disclosed’ is key.

0.1 million (aka 100,000) femtocells is nothing to be proud of, but honestly, I don't know what Sprint's expectations were.

Let’s consider the history.  Sprint launched their ‘Airave’ to much fanfare in August 2008.  At the time, the devices were featured prominently in their retail shops.  And in August, 2010, Sprint actually offered to give them away for FREE.

So after three years and giving them away for FREE, Sprint’s been able to actually pawn off 0.1 million devices.   With 50 million subscribers, this works out to a paltry 0.2% of the subscriber base.

How many of these units are actually active?  Many people I speak with who got a femtocell (not necessarily from Sprint) say they tried it and discarded it.

Compare this with T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi Calling service, which has roughly 5 million subscribers.  Of course they aren’t active all the time, but it’s certainly a lot more than 0.1m.

Three, Two, One, Launch!

At CTIA yesterday, T-Mobile announced three new phones with Wi-Fi Calling.

First up, the lightening fast G2x from LG (aka Optimus 2x).  This new device sports the Tegra dual-core processor from NVIDIA.  As the review said, “applications literally felt like they were opening and closing instantly.”  Throw in Wi-Fi Calling, and this phone is sure to be a winner.

Next up is the “Astound”, or Nokia C7.  Of course Nokia’s position in the US market is slim.  But after using the phone on the Nokia stand at CTIA, I have to say it isn’t half bad.  It’s not a ‘web’ phone like Android or iPhone, but as Sasha Segan suggests, it could be “T-Mobile’s best feature phone”.  Best feature:  Wi-Fi Calling!

Finally is the new Sidekick 4G from Samsung.  In July 2010, T-Mobile asked loyal Sidekick customers to “stay tuned for exciting updates in the months ahead.”  I guess they meant 9 months ahead, because the Sidekick franchise has been reborn with this cool new devices – which includes Wi-Fi Calling.

It's clear that T-Mobile is continuing to aggressively pursue their Wi-Fi Calling advantage in the Market.  More than half of all phones available on T-Mobile's website today are Wi-Fi Calling enabled.  It looks like this is a winner.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Me

Sunday’s announcement that AT&T was going to buy smaller rival T-Mobile did come as a surprise to many in the mobile industry.

At a reception for the CTIA Wireless show being held in Orlando (ironically hosted by Sprint), talk of the merger was a central topic for the night.

But rather than thinking about it in macro terms, I wanted to think about what it would mean to me, both a T-Mobile subscriber and being involved in providing Smart Wi-Fi (aka Wi-Fi Calling) to T-Mobile.

One of the reasons I’m passionate about Wi-Fi Calling is that it’s a critical tool for me.  I get one/two bars of edge service in my house and virtually no 3G.  Yet every time I pick up my phone at home, my signal is strong because of Wi-Fi.

So I was pleased when I saw Sasha Sagan’s post yesterday titled “The Five Best T-Mobile Features ATT Must Keep”, I was excited to see others excited about Wi-Fi Calling:

2. Wi-Fi Calling. AT&T and Verizon say their networks are so good that you should never need a backup. T-Mobile is humble enough to admit that, yeah, sometimes a Wi-Fi signal is better than a cellphone signal. T-Mobile's Wi-Fi calling solution is the best in the business. It's a lifeline in weak-signal areas, and it saves you big bucks abroad.

The others are good ideas too (‘Stock’ Android devices, true HSPA+, “Even More Plus”, and Great Customer Service), and are important to me as a consumer.  But I'm amazed by the number of tweets that are directed at having AT&T perpetuate Wi-Fi Calling.

@LunaticSX: It’d be awesome if T-Mobile USA’s UMA WiFi calling (http://bit.ly/f5i9wm ) became available to all AT&T customers, as well.
@gwapz: I just hope AT&T adopts T-Mobile UMA features.
@mikethewhite: @TMobile Please don't let At&t ruin #wificalling it's your best feature by far. (and non contract even more plus plans)

In the short term, Wi-Fi Calling should continue unabated.  It’s a significant sales and customer care advantage for T-Mobile.  Longer term, I’ve always believed that AT&T was an ideal operator to benefit from tighter Wi-Fi integration.

T-Mobile: The Wi-Fi Calling Carrier!

At T-Mobile's investor relations day in New York, new CEO Philip Humm, CTO Neville Ray and CMO Cole Brodman made this presentation.  While there are many fascinating facts, for those of us at the Smart Wi-Fi blog, we were drawn to slide 54.  Given the (moderate) controversy about  T-Mobile and femtocells this week, I think we know one thing for sure:

T-Mobile is the Wi-Fi Calling Carrier!

Or said another way, it's unlikely that T-Mobile will drop Wi-Fi Calling in favor of femtocells.  They may choose to add femtocells to their coverage portfolio, but one might want to ask why?

Slide 41 - "Wi-Fi coverage to bolster in-home coverage and broadband"
Slide 44 - "Wi-Fi provides improved coverage and offloads capacity"
Slide 54 - "Broad portfolio across all Android and BlackBerry smartphones"

Everything Everywhere talks Smart Wi-Fi

Everything Everywhere, the new powerhouse operator in the UK created by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, held an investor conference on September 28th.
In laying out their strategy for market domination, we happened to notice that UMA (aka Smart Wi-Fi) was to play a role.
This isn't that much of a surprise, given Orange UK has been quietly selling a UMA service for some time.  But Orange has been mum on the service...until now.  They are seeing how smart Wi-Fi can be used to help them provide everything to everyone everywhere their customers spend the most time -- the home and office.

Telefonica launches mobile VoIP

About 9 months ago, Telefonica purchased VoIP service provider Jajah for $207m. Today, it was announced that Telefonica is rolling out a new service called 'O2 Gloabl Friends' based on the Jajah technology.

Certainly we're glad to see mobile operators taking the VoIP threat seriously. Telefonica, with large operations in Europe and South America, may have been feeling the heat of Skype, now the largest service provider of international voice traffic.

For other service providers, there is an easier way than buying a VoIP provider. Based on the 3GPP GAN specification, it's possible to turn existing voice services into VoIP services.

No new VoIP gear, no new VoIP systems, it's all based on the existing voice network already installed. GAN turns the internet into a generic access network for all your mobile services, including voice. Products exist today!