Remember Chico.  Chico was the guy who was trying to get cell phone coverage at your party.  Yeah, Chico was standing in the corner, craning his neck to and fro.  He walked outside, down the street, and yelled in his cell constantly.  Poor Chico was suffering from no bar syndrome.  Well, 3G femtocells are aiming to halt bar syndrome.  Femtocells aim to allow cellular users to hook into existing wifi using their cell phones.  This will allow better indoor reception, but the overall strategy seems to be one of kicking VOIP in the groin.

The biggest front runner in this are is PicoChip.  Basically, the home base station emits a low signal that doesn’t spill past the walls.  This allows home or office users to be able to use their cells in the building, but prevents passers by from using it.

PicoChip CEO, Rodger Sykes, said, “Infrastructure for 3G is a multi-billion dollar market and one of the few telecoms opportunities still growing. However, it is extremely challenging, both technologically and commercially. picoChip has developed a solution that radically addresses the serious problems facing manufacturers and this has the potential to fundamentally change the way complex communication systems are designed. Our platform delivers the software-system-on-a-chip (SSOC) that manufacturers have been waiting for.”  It will be interesting to see if this technology takes hold in the consumer market.  I would think that consumers would start demanding something for use of their land internet line usage.  I know I would.  And it will be interesting to see if VOIP can start plowing forward to thwart the cellular infidels.

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