There has been a lot of chatter on the web that there may soon be a choice of femtocell service in the UK with O2 trialling femtocell services for both residential and business markets. Customer forums such as this one and this one offer a glimpse into how much anticipation there is among some users that their mobile coverage challenges will soon be solved.
The Boostbox is on a invite only trial…there’s some photos here and yes they do look remarkably similar to the Vodafone SureSignal box.
I’m curious as to what this will do for competition (assuming O2 progresses to commercial rollout). Femtocells have certainly allowed Vodafone to steel an edge with some customers (those that want good coverage) and helped prevent existing customers with poor coverage churn to another one of the UK’s operators – such as Orange/T-Mobile, O2, Virgin or Tesco. If O2 can do the same for its customers, will it stick at that? Or could the presence of rival femtocell services mean new pricing strategies for the boxes themselves, or within the homezone – maybe we will see free calls or free data with the femtozone as a way of differentiating? And what if all the big five offered residential femtos? Will differentiation then come in form factor (eg femto dongles for broadband routers) or cool applications and tie-ups with Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc.
Your thoughts, please….
It is even more substantial than that – it is actually on the O2 website as a “Pre Launch Product”
http://www.o2.co.uk/enterprise/products-and-services/prices-and-terms
Look at the lower left of products
Yes I’ve just realized…called O2 to get on the trial but need at least 10 phones on our company account to be considered for the trial.
I really really want a femto for home – my mobile reception in North London is so bad that I totally rely on Skype when working from home. Unbelievable that a free, best effort, no QoS service is better than my “premium” mobile connection. I have Vodafone femto for my wife’s phone – makes all the dfifference. C’mon O2, sort it out – i’m an “influencer”
@stewartbaines
We have developed a cool application that can be run on a femtocell. It is to use the femtocell as a server to run a social sharing application without the privacy and ownership concerns. Carriers can facilitate this and offer some potential revenue generating service on top of this app.