The elephant in the room with your customer and his or her 3G (and potentially LTE) data service is (slow) speed. And although nobody likes to mention the fact in polite company, it's an elephant that's going to become more visible as smartphone users expect their data-hungry mapping and media apps to actually work. By Ian Scales.
Whatever the reasons (and there may be several from fast-rising demand to thick walls) 3G seldom delivers the headline speeds advertised. Forget about megabits per second, most users (including this one) are lucky to get more than 100 kilobits data transfer out of their smartphones most of the time. As a result, one of the key buzz-phrases at mobile operators these days is 'customer retention", especially when it comes to business customers who have invested in 3G, expect it to actually work - and come back to the shop demanding solutions to be found and speeds to be jacked up.
There is an obvious walk-on role here for the femtocell, and that's a direction many telcos are beginning to explore, but a company called Nextivity is touting a repeater device. It claims that it has already had success in Ireland and Holland with its product and according to Nextivity CEO Werner Sievers, two out of the five operators in the UK are currently in serious discussion.
Actually, the company's Cel-Fi solution is two devices: a Window Unit (WU) sits where the cell network signal is strongest and does a transmitter/receiver job to the base station. The second device is located in the centre of the building/home and gathers and distributes signals to all the devices requiring service and communicates wirelessly with the Window Unit. The upshot is that Cel-Fi can apparently reliably deliver the speeds 3G is supposed to be able to deliver but, because of thick walls, transmission dead spots and the like, seldom does.
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