The company rolled out the service nationwide in August 2008. carrier to introduce a femtocell service, called Airave, in Denver and Indianapolis. In September 2007, Sprint Nextel became the first U.S. Because femtocell devices are tied to wireless carriers using licensed spectrum, you have to wait for your mobile provider to offer femtocell service. If you leave the building in the middle of a call, the call is handed off to your carrier's nearest cell tower.įemtocells are not like broadband routers, where you can choose from among a number of hardware vendors. Carriers benefit by being able to offload traffic from their main networks, saving the substantial cost of building more cell towers.įemtocells have a range of around 5,000 feet and are intended for use inside a single home or small office. Subscribers get a stronger, clearer, more reliable signal at home - which means more users may finally be able to ditch their landline phone service for good. Like the wireless router that distributes a DSL or cable broadband signal throughout your home, a femtocell device - sometimes called a miniature cellular base station or a mini-cell tower - grabs your carrier's cellular signal and boosts it for indoor use, routing your calls through the broadband connection rather than directly through the larger cellular network.

Femtocells address the problem of poor cell phone reception indoors by taking advantage of the proliferation of home and small office broadband connections.

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