The idea of femtocells—small broadcast units placed in a home to provide better coverage—has been around for a while, but seems to be picking up momentum with Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin saying he thinks the technology will be commercially deployed by mid-next year, reports the WSJ. In Europe 30-40 percent of mobile-phone calls are made from within the home, while in the US the figure is as high as 60 percent, according to London-based research firm Ovum. However, mobile signals have difficulty penetrating walls, so putting what is in effect a small broadcast tower into the home not only increases coverage within the home but takes some traffic off the main network, all of which should save telcos money. The big issue at the moment is the price—femtocells cost between $150-200, which carriers don’t wish to pay because the price of voice calls is declining, and customers don’t want to pay because the main beneficiary will be the carriers. Still, the price should come down as the technology matures…probably businesses will use them first.

The next question which will be raised is whether carriers will give cheaper calls and cheaper data prices when people are using femtocells. In some cases carriers already offer cheaper calls within the home to compete with landlines so it’s not a big step… It would also save a lot of issues with mobile content. Downloads would be faster because there would only be one (or a few) people using the network, theoretically cheaper because the broadband data link is already paid for, and that obviates the need to sideload which makes the whole process a lot simpler.

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