Starhub plugs in first commercial femtocell service

The service, dubbed Home Zone, lets mobile users make calls, send SMSs and make video calls for free from their homes across their broadband cable connections. Incoming services are charged to the originators at the usual rate, as are MMS, international calls and mobile downloads and web surfing.

Femtocells are in-premises or in-home mini cell-sites which attach to a residential or business broadband access service and enable calls to be made over the wired network when the user is in range, reducing load on the radio network.

The femto approach, where the cell is treated by the phone as just another 3G cell site,  is thought to be superior to the 2G Unlicenced Mobile Access (UMA) approach which requires a phone capable of switching between say, GSM and WiFi, to make the calls.