Femtocells? What are they? They're like local broadcast towers located within your home, to give you better mobile coverage - the one pictured is called the Oyster, incidentally. Just the thing if you're thinking of ditching your landline, but are fed up with only getting one bar of reception on the sofa.
You can't get one yet, however. But that could change next year, as Vodafone chief Arun Sarin has claimed that femtocells will be commercially available by the middle of 2008. However, they could be pricey - MocoNews estimates the cost of one to be between $150 and $200 (£74-£99) - and there's some debate over whether operators will be prepared to subsidise this cost.
Could femtocells be the final nail in the coffin for traditional landlines? We're not so sure, unless they're teamed up with cheaper prices to call mobile phones. One of the main factors stopping people from ditching their landline for their mobile is how much it'll cost other people to call them. The operators will also need to persuade people that having a femtocell is safe from a brain-frying radiation point of view (even if you think the idea is silly, it's people's perception that counts).
(via MocoNews)
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