Sunday, September 16, 2007

Today's Globe column: Cell Towers, the Home Version

Today's column deals with a few of the local companies developing technology for femtocells -- essentially a tiny cellphone tower for your home -- and some of the VC firms backing them. From the piece:

    Plugged into your high-speed Internet connection, they'll communicate with your existing cellphone whenever you're at home, and send your calls over the Internet. The benefits are better coverage, faster data speeds, and longer battery life for your handset - since it no longer has to communicate with a cell tower that may be a mile away.


And here's Airvana CEO Randy Battat talking about femtos...it'll be interesting to see whether Airvana's femtocell product looks like the prototype he has in the video, or has a flashier design (Randy is an ex-Apple exec, after all.)

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I read your article with great interest on Femtocells. I also watched the video on Boston.Com. I live in a home that is off the grid. I use a cell phone and my Internet is provided via Satellite. I was interested to find out if the Femtocell would work with satellite Internet given the latency involved? Do you know where I could find any information on this subject?
Thanks for the interesting article
Doug

September 17, 2007 5:09 PM  
Blogger Scott Kirsner said...

Doug -

I heard from Amit Jain, who heads the femtocell group at Airvana. Here's what he says: "The femtocell will work with satellite backhaul but the latency will be similar to what the user will get with a satellite phone."

SK

September 17, 2007 5:26 PM  

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