Vodafone 'home mobile' will still count against voice and data tariffs

Vodafone has a nasty shock in store for would-be users of its "femtocell", which boosts patchy mobile signals indoors by sending the voice and data signal over the customer's home broadband. Any mobile data sent over the home broadband connection will still be charged against customers' monthly usage, the company has told the Guardian. Outlining plans for future deployment, Vodafone senior marketing manager Lee McDougall said Vodafone is confident that consumer uptake of femtocells will be high. However he declined to give figures for sales since the launch in July 2009, or to say what increase in mobile use had been seen by femtocell users. Femtocells – whose name comes from the prefix "femto", meaning one millionth of a billionth – are designed to improve mobile network coverage by plugging into a home broadband network and providing a 3G connection to attached phones. Vodafone remains the only UK mobile operator in the UK to offer femtocells, through two different price plans. The current range – dubbed Sure Signal boxes – are retailing at £50 for existing customers on contracts over £25 per month, or £120 – £5 per month for two years – for those on smaller contracts or pay-as-you-go contracts. But though femtocells effectively relieve load on the mobile network, and send them via the broadband paid for by the customer, any minutes used calling via the femtocell will be taken from a customers monthly allowance, despite having already paid for the bandwidth in the original package. And mobile data sent via Sure Signal – and through the customer's broadband – will count against the data tariff for the contract as though the customer were outside using a mobile mast. In Japan, mobile corporation SoftBank offers free femtocell packages to existing customers. Asked why Vodafone would not be following its lead, McDougall said: "Different markets have different drivers. We know we've got a competitive product." At a time when data traffic is doubling every four months, according to O2 , femtocells are an inexpensive solution to rapidly growing demand. Data transfers over femtocell are also far less expensive to the network operator than other means, as Dave Nowicki of mobile technology firm Airvana confirmed. "The marginal cost of delivery per gigabyte is much lower," he said. "Femtocells are complementary to Wi-Fi." The Advertising Standards Authority last week upheld four complaints from rival mobile operators who said that advertising for the product was "misleading". Vodafone's poster campaign pictured a man leaning out of his apartment window, apparently struggling to get a mobile signal, headed: "Only Vodafone can guarantee mobile signal in your home." The most pointed complaint came from rival mobile operator O2 which said Vodafone did not make clear users would have to pay additional costs for a femtocell device. On this, the ASA said it was reasonable for people to infer that a guaranteed signal was part of the original mobile package – but because this was not the case, the advertisement was likely to mislead. McDougall told the Guardian the campaign would be modified to take into account the ASA ruling, maintaining that Vodafone Sure Start boxes would not be a hard sell to would-be customers. "Customers have told us the product is lifechanging for them," McDougall told the Guardian. "They said it had made a significant difference to their life. The more they hear about them the more they're interested." Although he said he couldn't put a figure on it, internal reports showed a higher-than-predicted uplift in data usage for customers trialling the Sure Signal boxes. "Feedback from an 8m-leaflet door drop indicated that 90% of potential customers were willing to pay up front; unsurprisingly the desire to boost mobile signal was the biggest driver," he said. In the US, AT&T is taking the same approach to mobile data sent through femtocells as Vodafone, and counting it against the customer's bill. AT&T argues that it is costly to install the systems at ISPs which will collect the voice and mobile data being sent by broadband and route it through its own network.