
A cell tower just for you
An example of this is the reported installation of cell towers at the ranch of John McCain,
last year's republican US presidential candidate. Living in a remote area had meant poor
or non-existent coverage from several networks - an important issue for
a presidential hopeful and senator with oversight of the FCC. Both
Verizon and AT&T were approached to install celltowers on their
land, which would cover their area and some of the local neighbourhood.
After considering but deciding against installation of permanent
towers, and after intervention by the US Secret Service, both
companies decided to install portable cell-towers - complete units
fitting into a road trailer - at the cost of several tens of thousands
of dollars.
Many ordinary citizens would question why they couldn't have the same
level of service. Although the ranch owned by the McCains is somewhat
larger that the average household, the new technology of femtocells
could cover the indoor areas of their property quite easily and
effectively - and at a lot lower cost.
One wonders if Sprint or Verizon might consider posting an femtocell unit or two
to the ranch for use rather than using portable cell towers - it
would be 100 times less expensive than other approaches.
Perhaps we can also expect VIP treatment for poor coverage to a wider range of less important people - we've heard Orange (in Europe) are using their UMA/WiFi solution for customer retention in cases of poor localised indoor coverage, which femtocells (and T-Mobile's hotspot@home) are also able to address.
Gold Plated Femtocells
I came across a gold plated iPhone the other day - it made me wonder how long it will be before gold plated femtocells are also on offer. (These may be less common in the current economic climate).
Perhaps C-Level execs will expect to be amongst the first to receive femtocells after their commercial launch, and operational teams can breath a sign of relief with fewer complaints of indoor coverage problems from their management teams.