BYOCT (bring your own cellular tower) set to take off

Wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon have an ingenious way to improve service to the roughly 50 percent of all subscribers who complain of poor reception at home:

Buy your own cellular tower.

For $100 and a monthly service charge, U.S. wireless carriers will provide customers with a "femtocell," a miniature cell-phone tower for the home. It's a bit galling that customers should have to pay even more to get reasonable cellular service, but it's looking like a sure bet that the program will take off, as consumers (like myself) are desperate to finally get the quality cellular service for which they've long paid.

The benefits to the carriers, as Businessweek notes, are clear:

It's easy to understand why wireless operators like femtocells. The technology lets them shift some of the burden of adding wireless capacity to their customers. Carriers pay for traditional cell phone towers themselves, of course, and the costs can hit $500,000 per tower. In addition, community opposition to new towers is common and can delay construction for years. Carriers do pay for the femtocell box, which runs about $200 now, but they recoup the cost by reselling the box to consumers for about $100 and collecting ongoing fees for femto service. "There's a dirty little secret," says Tammy Parker, principal analyst at Informa. "The femtocell benefits the carrier more than the end user."

Sign me up. Seriously. Along with many (most?) others, I've long been an unwilling dupe of the cellular industry, paying thousands of dollars over the course of a year for shoddy service. Why? Because there hasn't been an alternative.

Now, however, there's an opportunity to improve the reception of my cellular service, and I admit that I'm happy to be duped again. Anything to improve the service. Where do I sign up?

[kennethpdavis]

How do the femtocells do backhaul? Do they piggyback on my broadband?

[bwwardiii]

This could be nice but it depends on how much extra they charge me per month. Something like this would make it possible for ANYONE to want to get rid of their landline seeing as they would probably have full bars throughout their home.

[toddbernhard]

What about BYOI (Bring Your Own Internet)? Could this add network access to 3G for a household LAN?

[Galaxy5]

Analogous to people having to pay up front and ongoing fees for rural electrification.

Yay. What a triumph. The free market rules. Whoo. Hoo.

[Idyot]

What happens to the 20GB bandwidth limit when a new AT&T DSL customer in Reno hooks up a femtocell box and that customer and their family downloads 5-8 movies/month from Netflix and iTunes, streams content on their iPhones, and has 1 to 4 PCs and laptops in the home that the family uses to surf the internet each day?

Are the ISPs going to exempt the bandwidth used by hardware like femtocell and "registered" content providers who are completing a business transaction by delivering content to a consumer?

If the ISPs haven't considered such business related exemptions, then they need to start to.

[neowolfwitch]

T-Mobile has been doing a variation of this for something like two years with their hotspot@home service. It uses WiFi with a broadband backhaul though. My experience with it has been really variable, probably due more to my broadband provider than the technology itself.

[Sybek317]

Have people lost their minds? Seriously think about this. Do you think that you're going to be the only person using your personal femtocell tower. FemtoCells are location specific not Device specific so you're providing coverage for a limited area. The phone companies can't use this as a viable option to extend their services to more than one small area so their idea is to charge the customer. If they were smart they would put in a MUCH more powerful femtocell and offer rebates to the customers for allowing them to extend their services in that area. Don't be swayed into paying for something that you already paid for. Demand the service according to your agreement with said provider.

[Steve Jordan]

I've got a better idea:If I put their femtocell on my house, I'll charge them for leasing my land. Otherwise, I'll just buy an aftermarket device myself for $100 more, and the heck with their monthly charge.

[Eludium-Q36]

Many people, including my brother in N'ville, have gotten this totally without charge from Sprint when they complain that their circumstances warrant it. For instance, said brother was getting dinged by Sprint for using roaming too much (within his own home!). So this was a case where Sprint gave him the Femtocell ($99 val) and unlimited mins ($15/month) for no extra charge. Note, he's not a cry baby "I'm going to defect" whiner like many found in forums and he's a long-term two-line customer, too, so I'm sure that counts for their beneficence to him.

[BrandtProvo]

Home cellular repeaters have been available for years -- typically retailing about $300. There are even car versions. They don't require any special permission or even knowledge by the carrier. (Google for cellular repeater for a number of listings.) In addition to improving reception they also save battery life because your phone requires less power to get to the repeater.

[The_Decider]

I am surprised you would fall for this scam Matt.

This is no different than MS charging to tighten security on their holey OS.

Steve Jordan has it right, the cell companies should be paying their customers for doing this.

Don't be a sucker.

[JakeS102]

There is nothing new about Cellular repeaters. Willson Amps have been around for many years: wilsonelectronics.com. These amps are within the safe exposure limits yet they increase your cell signal by up to 6X. I have one installed in my vehicle and it works great. If the cell companies start forcing the public to boost their own signal, then they may continue to move to that form of coverage in the future, sticking us with the bill and in the meantime continuing to raise our rates.