Vodafone Access Gateway

[Luckypants]

I am wondering if anyone has one of these gizmos? I live in a poor signal area and this would seem to be a good solution to making / receiving calls on my mobile while at home.

So any feedback on them would be appreciated. Do you have one? Do you sell them? Are they worth it? Will it old hat in a few months?

Having a quick look round t'internet, seems like it's brand spanking new, so not many reviews out there at the moment...

Theory looks good, register 4 handsets to the device so other people don't benefit, uses your broadband etc.

Is your mobile 3G? One place I saw it mentioned says it may be worth trying to end your contract and giving the reason as "poor signal at home" and seeing if you can get on for free

[flymo]

Yep, we have two. One installed at a colleagues house in North Wales and the other as a test unit in the office.

Is it worth it? Well, if you have a broadband line then it provides you with a full Vodafone signal at your house. It allows up to 4 mobiles to use it at the same time, you nominate the handset numbers so that passers by cannot use your connection.

Works very well.

It's a femtocell. They should work fine, as they have been in testing for quite a long time with the manufacturers.

However, you will have a cell phone transmitter in your house, and are effectively providing the service for your house over your broadband line for vodaphone, whist paying for it! i.e. Vodaphone should upgrade their network, instead they are saying pay us a couple of hunderd quid for the unit, and pay your broadband bill and you can do it for us, cheers!

Dan

Seems like a bit of a cheek to me too. I'd expect that if I live in a bad signal area and had complained numerous times that they offer this to me for free rather then leaving them. Plus you have no idea if they are piggy backing other stuff of them, effectively creating a network of little transmitters that the customer has paid for.

[flymo]

Originally Posted by Grinch

Seems like a bit of a cheek to me too. I'd expect that if I live in a bad signal area and had complained numerous times that they offer this to me for free rather then leaving them. Plus you have no idea if they are piggy backing other stuff of them, effectively creating a network of little transmitters that the customer has paid for.

I agree its a little cheeky but its basically a choice you have at the end of the day. Vodafone likely know already that you dont have the option of coverage from another supplier in most cases and they are basically letting you foot the bill for what they see as an uneconomical extension to their coverage.

You do get control over who uses it though as you have to explicitly add supported numbers from cell phones. Somebody stood outside your house would not get a signal from your unit unless you specifically allowed them to.

If anybody wants any more detailed feedback or pics etc let me know.

[Luckypants]

Thanks guys, but that is the same information as the internet has provided up so far, I'm looking for real world feedback. As far as paying for their backhaul as part of my broadband goes, do I care? I have an ADSL connection with spare capacity. It won't cost me any more to get a good signal in the house.

As far as purchasing one goes, I can get it for free on certain contracts and I'm out of contract on my current phone, so that is not an issue.

You can register 32 handsets, but only 4 can call at any one time. So it is more than capable of handling all my family's calls. By doing that it saves me money, as currently I pay for calls to mobiles and my kids (when here) only call mobiles. This will save £30-£40 a quarter in call charges.

Flymo - it was Craig who mentioned this to me and your colleague lives on the other side of the Vale of Clwyd to me. My main interest is how well it works for phones and text. I certainly would be interested in more detailed feedback about range - I know the spec. sheet says 30m radius but how is that affected in the real world for instance? What is call quality like? Any call drop outs? What is the effect of multiple simultaneous calls? What effect does other traffic the ADSL line have? etc

Apart from the above, I'm also wondering if there is some technology lurking that will make this obsolete? Such as these pico-cell things that I cannot really find out about or how they work. The residents association is trying to get one of the mobile companies to do something to provide coverage in the village. (I'm lucky that I get a bad signal, most have no signal) If these pico-cells make it economical for say Orange to provide coverage, why should I buy something I could get for free?

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Grinch

Seems like a bit of a cheek to me too. I'd expect that if I live in a bad signal area and had complained numerous times that they offer this to me for free rather then leaving them.

Folk in the village have been complaining for years about coverage in the village. No one is interested in doing anything about it because the potential revenues are so small. There are only 60 houses many with old folks living there who have no mobile. Hence my interest. And you do get it free, on certain contracts.

[flymo]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

My main interest is how well it works for phones and text. I certainly would be interested in more detailed feedback about range - I know the spec. sheet says 30m radius but how is that affected in the real world for instance? What is call quality like? Any call drop outs? What is the effect of multiple simultaneous calls? What effect does other traffic the ADSL line have? etc

Can certainly get you our experiences on that. We've got the one in the office at the moment setup as a test unit on a fairly slow broadband line (512Kb) so will let you know how internet activity affects call quality if at all. If the connection drops or you move out of range of the unit your mobile will automatically roam onto the nearest Vodfone cell if there is one, but I dont think it auto connects back again during a call.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by flymo

If the connection drops or you move out of range of the unit your mobile will automatically roam onto the nearest Vodfone cell if there is one, but I dont think it auto connects back again during a call.

Yeah that is covered in the specs on Vodafone site, but hardly an issue for the customer's like me. We have no signal outside so will hang about to finish the call. IIRC If you wander out of range your phone will connect to the proper cell if there is one without losing the call (cell can be 3G or 2G). If you wander into range of the femtocell (Access Gateway) while on a call, no handover to the femtocell takes place and the call is completed on the standard phone cell, so if there is no signal indoors then the call is lost. After that the handset will connect to the femtocell and you can redial.