Anyone had experience of Vodafones new access hub...

[j_r_f]

...the one that plugs into your broadband for areas of really poor connection. I have a company contract with Vodafone and frequently have a dead battery due to it constantly scanning for a signal

[jimbouk]

Well I've attended a couple of talks about the technology - it's all about the femtocells! They seem to work and be reasonable clever. Shame they cost money as they are simply doing telcos job for them by providing reception and bandwidth back to the network. If you have a steady 1meg+ internet connection and don't mind splashing the cash (or your company doesn't if it can be justified to them...) then give it a whirl.

[j_r_f]

Thanks for the reply - as it would be company funded I'll try and push for one.

If they agree the expendature I'll update my experiences here.

[jimbouk]

If they agree the expendature I'll update my experiences here.

Cool, it would be good to know how that actually work in practice. Whilst it was a technical talk it still was a little bit too much marketing involved.

[burble]

They're a great idea but executed incredibly bad! I've got a couple of them (one in the office, one at home) and when they work, they work very well but quite often they don't work.

About a week or so ago the entire gateway network was down but because my phone was still reporting a full 3G signal I knew nothing about it. I called the Gateway team at Vodafone and they told me there was nothing wrong despite a thread on their support forum where numerous people were reporting the same problem.

Personally I'd wait until the Vodafone side of things have matured a bit more. They definitely have the potential to be a great asset but with the frequent outages they are more trouble than they are worth at the moment.

[LSmith4285]

We have tested them at work and found them to be really useful. Not experienced any problems but I wouldn't say our test users have really stress tested them.

Lyle

[Moby-Dick]

a work collegue just got one, will feedback what his experiences where..

[madman045]

A client of mine got one recently and he gets almost no signal at all without it, with it he gets a full signal no matter where he is in the house.

[Funkstar]

We need O2 to release one of these. Our contract at work is with O2, but we only get a T-Mobile signal in the office (mine is the only phone that ever rings, I get nasty looks when it does )