理工学术英语阅读资源库-Reading 1-Passage Two

Bringing Cell Phones Home

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (Achieve3000, April 3, 2008)

A new wireless device that operates via the Internet promises a boost in cell phone coverage inside of homes, a territory where many cellular carrier companies have experienced difficulty providing reception.

People frequently chat on their cell phones in restaurants, at the store, in their cars—and increasingly, at home—relying on cell phone towers to carry their phones’ signals. So many people are using their cell phones at home, in fact, that many have canceled their landline service altogether and now subscribe solely to cellular service.

For some cellular subscribers, however, the cell phone-only strategy simply isn’t practical. Some wireless carriers have difficulty projecting sufficient signals inside homes. As a result, many customers struggle with poor reception indoors. But wireless companies attending the 2008 Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, learned that this problem may soon be a thing of the past.

At the conference, one of the largest cellular service carriers, Verizon Wireless, revealed that it has been conducting trials and is preparing to offer consumers devices that promise to solve the signal-strength problems.

The devices, called “femtocells”, are little boxes with antennae that function like base stations for cordless phones. A femtocell connects directly to a customer’s home computer, which must already have a broadband Internet connection. Once the femtocell is installed, the customer’s cell phone transmits voice and data signals—such as text messages—directly to the femtocell, rather than to outdoor cell phone towers. The femtocell then relays the signals to the cellular carrier’s network via the computer’s broadband connection. It’s like having a personal indoor cell phone tower.

Sprint Nextel is already selling femtocells in Denver, Indianapolis, and Nashville.

Femtocell vendors at the CTIA aver that femtocells offer a variety of benefits for cell phone carriers, perhaps the most attractive being the capacity to gain more customers. As customers switch to femtocells, the number of signals being transmitted to cell phone towers will be reduced. This reduction will enable cell phone carriers to service more customers. In addition, femtocells transfer signals more quickly and with better quality than do outdoor towers. Vendors say that this will increase customer satisfaction, which will in turn boost customer retention rates and induce new customers to buy. The higher quality of indoor service, vendors assert, will also cause more households to switch from landlines to cell phones. This is expected to create an explosion of new customers as entire families, rather than individuals, convert to cellular plans.

Vendors claim that the devices also offer carriers pecuniary benefits. Since femtocells send signals directly over the customer’s broadband connection, cell phone carriers do not have to pay the expense of transmitting signals from their towers to their networks.

The cost of the boxes, however, may prove a major obstacle for carriers. While femtocells currently cost cellular carriers about $200 apiece, Sprint charges customers only $49.99 for the box, plus an additional $15 per month for unlimited calls. The company subsidizes the cost of femtocells in order to encourage customers to buy them.

“It’s so much to their benefit to get these into people’s homes,” said Paul Callahan, vice president of business development for Airvana, Inc., a company that markets femtocells to cellular carriers, “that they’re going to subsidize these things.”

Callahan believes that by next year, the cost to carriers will drop to about $150 per box. The price is expected to drop even further as more suppliers enter the market.

Besides the expense of the femtocell boxes, another potential problem has caused skepticism: interference. Customers might experience interference if they are simultaneously within range of an outdoor cell phone tower and their femtocell. Customers may also experience interference when switching from a tower to their femtocell. In addition, carriers must find a way to ensure that their customers’ femtocells do not experience interference from other cell phones in the neighborhood. Some experts say these problems may prove too complex to correct.

Sprint spokeswoman Emmy Anderson said that there haven’t been any issues with interference between the femtocells and towers, and that customer feedback has been positive. Technology industry analysts also believe the potential problems can be solved. Analysts predict that as many as 19 million femtocells will be sold by 2011.

Vocabulary:

aver        v.   to assert or affirm with confidence

pecuniary  adj.   having to do with money

subsidize    v.   to pay for part of something in order to reduce its cost to others