Can VocalTec Negotiate Seamless Handoff Deals For Its FemtoJack?
One of the major concerns with the femtoJack is in regards to seamless handoff. More simply put the concern is in regards to what happens when someone is talking on their cell phone by way of the femtoJack and then they jump in their car and pull away while continuing their phone conversation. With femtocells seamless handoff is simple but while using the femtojack there are two possible outcomes. The first outcome will be that their phone call is dropped as they leave their femtoJacks range. In this case they will have to call the person back and be connected through their cell carriers signal in order to continue the conversation.
The second possible outcome will be that as they leave their femtoJacks range they will be able to continue their phone call without noticing any changes. In this case their cell phone will work with the femto Jack and their cell carrier to switch networks through a process called seamless handoff.
Seamless handoff is a common occurrence among cell phones that happens millions of times each and every day. During normal day-to-day use of cell phones seamless handoff happens as people move from one cell towers signal to another or from Wi-Fi calling to cell towers. When doing this the new cell tower that someone comes into range with grabs their call just as the cell tower they are moving away from drops their call, all in a split second without any notice from the user.
For cell carriers seamless handoff is a no brainer because they can handoff signals between their own towers or even between other carriers towers that they have shared service agreements with. For magicjack VocalTec LTD. and the femtoJack seamless handoff will not be as simple. In order from seamless handoff to occur cell carriers and VocalTec will have to come to some sort of agreement, an agreement that benefits both parties. We don’t see this agreement coming to fruition with easy though since there is little benefit to the cell carriers in agreeing to allow seamless handoff. VocalTec and the femtoJack are targeting cell carriers as their direct competition and attacking a huge source of revenue for these cell carriers. Seamless handoff for the device doesn’t help the cell companies at all and it makes no sense for them to help their direct competition.
Seamless handoff for the femtoJack would be awesome but we just don’t see how any agreement for such occurrence could be reached. Perhaps we are missing something?
3 thoughts on “Can VocalTec Negotiate Seamless Handoff Deals For Its FemtoJack?”
I don’t think you are missing anything. Operators paid millions of dollars for the spectrum that Ymax is using in subscribers’ homes under the guise that their license doesn’t extend into these homes. There is tons of legal precendent on this – all of it in favor of the operator. The FCC left some spectrum unlicensed just so homeowners would have a band in which they could transmit. This enables licensed signals to function without interference from rogue transmitters (like magicJack’s femto). Unlicensed spectrum is what WiFi and cordless phones use. As noted in your posting, the operators have zero incentive to enable these handoffs. The magicJack femto takes a cool full featured device like the iPhone and turns it into a voice only phone. Not sure I see the value there…..
I DONT THINK THIS WILL WORK BECAUSE YOU WILL BE USING A NUMBER THAT MAGIC JACK GAVE YOU AND IF YOU GET OUT OF RANGE YOU WILL BE ROAMING OR WHAT IF YOU HAVE AN ATT OR TMOBILE NUMBER FOR THAT CELL PHONE WELL MAYBE IM WRONG LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS ONCE THIS FEMTO JACK COMES OUT
Actually for the iphone the use of a wifi connection to the net would enable all the features you would be missing and femtojack would allow the calling. This is meant to be used to enable a cell user that lives in an area where cell reception is not good in your dwelling…yes I know shocking there are places in this country that have limited cell connectivity! 🙂 Also this would allow you to choose a plan with fewer minutes, keeping those pesky kids from using up all your minutes!! 😉
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I don’t think you are missing anything. Operators paid millions of dollars for the spectrum that Ymax is using in subscribers’ homes under the guise that their license doesn’t extend into these homes. There is tons of legal precendent on this – all of it in favor of the operator. The FCC left some spectrum unlicensed just so homeowners would have a band in which they could transmit. This enables licensed signals to function without interference from rogue transmitters (like magicJack’s femto). Unlicensed spectrum is what WiFi and cordless phones use. As noted in your posting, the operators have zero incentive to enable these handoffs. The magicJack femto takes a cool full featured device like the iPhone and turns it into a voice only phone. Not sure I see the value there…..
I DONT THINK THIS WILL WORK BECAUSE YOU WILL BE USING A NUMBER THAT MAGIC JACK GAVE YOU AND IF YOU GET OUT OF RANGE YOU WILL BE ROAMING OR WHAT IF YOU HAVE AN ATT OR TMOBILE NUMBER FOR THAT CELL PHONE WELL MAYBE IM WRONG LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS ONCE THIS FEMTO JACK COMES OUT
Actually for the iphone the use of a wifi connection to the net would enable all the features you would be missing and femtojack would allow the calling. This is meant to be used to enable a cell user that lives in an area where cell reception is not good in your dwelling…yes I know shocking there are places in this country that have limited cell connectivity! 🙂 Also this would allow you to choose a plan with fewer minutes, keeping those pesky kids from using up all your minutes!! 😉