“Enter femtocells, little boxes which leech off home broadband connections to create bubbles of cell phone service. AT&T calls its a 3G MicroCell [US$150]. Verizon’s is a Network Extender [US$250]. Sprint’s is an Airave [US$100+$5-$25/mo.]. Whatever they’re called, they exist to make up for the carriers’ failure to provide comprehensive coverage,” Segan writes. “Femtocells also save the carriers oodles of money by shifting calls off of their own networks (which they pay for) onto your home Wi-Fi connection (which you’re paying for.) Every iPhone that AT&T can get onto a MicroCell is an iPhone which isn’t latching on to an AT&T tower. Instead, it’s making Comcast or another ISP take the hit.”
“Carriers should be giving these things away. They should be thrusting them into the hands of every new iPhone owner, begging them to kick their traffic over to their home ISP instead of crowding our already overloaded 3G spectrum,” Segan writes. “By installing one of these boxes, you are doing the carrier a favor.”
“So why are the carriers charging for them? Charging for the hardware is bad enough; Verizon’s $249 Network Extender fee pretty much guarantees that it’ll sell like limp, ice-cold hotcakes… [but] Sprint takes the customer insult to a new level by charging $5/month to use the extender at all. It’s almost like Sprint doesn’t want its customers to have a better signal… [Unlike AT&T’s MicroCell], Sprint’s and Verizon’s don’t offer 3G data service,” Segan writes. “I understand that the hardware costs money and there are support costs involved, but come on: providing coverage is the most basic job a carrier should be doing.”
Read more in the full article here.