Vodafone Offers Home Broadband via HSPA / 3.5g

IanFogg | June 04, 2008, 02:20 PM

Vodafone Italy is now offering an innovative home gateway that has both ADSL2+ and HSPA (ie a 3.5g mobile radio). What's special is that the mobile radio is used completely differently to normal discussions of fixed-mobile or femtocells.

Here, the HSPA radio offers an alternative to ADSL2+ to route a consumer's access onto the Internet (ie backhaul from the gateway). And, just like any other home broadband modem or router, a consumer's computer connects to the gateway through WiFi as normal.

A conventional femtocell approach uses the HSPA radio to connect a consumer's device to the gateway as an alternative to WiFi. And, ADSL2+, HFC cable, or fibre to route the consumer's data from the gateway onto the Internet (ie backhaul). Typically in this scenario, a consumer device would be a mobile phone, although it could also be a laptop using a mobile radio.

The advantages for Vodafone of using HSPA, alongside ADSL2+, in this gateway include:

- Avoids delays between a consumer purchase of a broadband service and the service going live and being ready for use, due to the minimum provisioning time for ADSL2+ which is not entirely in Vodafone's control due to their partial reliance on LLU service and wholesale DSL packages (applies outside Italy too).
- Reduces Vodafone's dependence on ADSL2+ coverage (although good in Italy).
- Creates a broadband product which is easy for a customer to transfer between houses or flats. So, could increase appeal to market segments that move house frequently and wish to avoid hitting contract lock-in problems.

There is also potential for small business broadband products for similar reasons to the above.

This is yet another example of the current collision between the mobile broadband and home broadband markets. There's more in this report, especially note figure 9.