Couple of years back I blogged about end users making money by allowing operators to deploy Femtocells. I cant remember but someone did say that it was a crazy idea. Well Softbank, the Japanese operator is doing something similar.
Rather than giving cashback, they are giving in free ADSL connection. The customers will have to sign a 2 years contract though. With free ADSL connection and a Femtocell, surely the end users are winners. They only have to invest in electricity which would not be a lot. The operator can end up as a winner as well as they get a better coverage by deploying open access Femtocells.
According to Will Franks, CTO of Ubiquisys, Softbank can afford to do this because femtocells are cheap and the IMS based architecture used by Softbank allows easy scalability. They are expecting upto 200,000 femtos to be rolled out in this scheme this year.
My take is that this is going to be the case but there will always be people who would be reluctant to get the Free Femtos + ADSL deal. They could instead be tempted with cashback if someone makes or receives call by accessesing their femto or instead free calls can be offered to the owner while he is camped onto his residential femto. A combination of both would be a good business case as well.
Anyway, Softbank is setting a good bar for other operators to compete with.
Picture Source: Femtocell Pioneer.
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