Has anyone used the above? Are they any good? Any drawbacks?

Not on EE, but I have a 3 femtocell. Had no reception on my phone before and now I have full reception

ummm, I can’t think of any drawbacks

I’ve been using one since last November and it has been very reliably – noticeably more so than the Vodafone sure signal I tried a while back. EE are upgrading all of their masts at the moment so all of them will be 2g,3G and 4g by the end of next year – the 2g signal is also stronger. In our area that has meant since 4g was switched on the signal is stronger and faster all round with the result a signalbox isn’t really needed anymore.

How do you get hold of an EE one? I’m on Orange / EE and have a shocking signal at home but great everywhere else

i called them up today and asked for one wasn’t cheap at £106 but its nice to have a phone that works at home. they sound like a brilliant idea

They want to charge you for it? 3 gave me mine for free

Yeah not 100% happy with it been a customer since 2007 guess loyalty doesn’t count for much anymore

If you have lost coverage due to EE’s recent network integration project with mBNL you can get one for free with enough haggling.

It’s worth a shot I’ve messaged tmobile on twitter so we shall see

I provide tech support to EE for the femtocell, and had one at home for a year now, as part of a friendly user trial. Gone from 1 bar of 2G to 5 bars of HSPA+.

The plus points for having a femto cell:

.. The battery on your mobile will last a longer time between charges, as it isn’t using high power to transmit to a mast several km’s away.
.. The amount of missed calls you get at home will reduce.
.. You can blag your mates at home with your cheap jack Nokia E5, being able to access Singletrack way quicker than their Gucci Samsungs/Apples/etc

10+ dropped calls on ee yesterday. **** pain in the ass!!! Latest conspiracy round our way is that they’re “turning down” the 3G quality so everyone sIgns up for 4g

So far so good, it’s working pretty well, I’ve had to reset it twice apart from that can’t complain.
I’ve gone from no signal what so ever to full 3G everywhere at home

Anyone know if O2 plan to release one? Googling suggests they have a “Boostbox”, but only for business customers.

Mind you, I’m not too sure I want a mobile transmitter in a house with two young children. What is the power output on them?

Just don’t use one if you are on ee4g.

They haven’t sorted out the routing between the femto service and the core network with the result that inbound calls mostly don’t get routed to the phone when at home. Even though voice calls are delivered over 2g or 3G whilst on 4g the service they either go to voicemail or the caller just hears silence. It’s a known problem that ee currently don’t have any plans to fix.

If you get one installed, can anybody use it or is it phone specific? I.e. if people next door have EE could they also use your internet connection via the 3g from the femto?

I’ve been trying to get a Signal Box off EE since before xmas, even if I get through to someone who understands what I’m talking about (which is rare) I just get fobbed off with different excuses. I even offered to pay for one and was told they’re not available.

If EE have switched off a mast in your area and you whinge about it, you’ll get one for free. Otherwise you have to pay, but they gave me a 10% discount just for asking. Frankly, they should probably be paying us for extending their network architecture, but you can’t have everything.

Very impressed overall. You can tell you’re on the box because the phone plays a little tune before it connects.

retro83 – correct, but later this year access controls will be introduced. The box establishes a VPN connection with EE so even if next door go looking for really dodgy stuff it won’t be linked to your connection.