A common experience with many mobile phone buyers – you spend weeks researching the various phones on offer, make your choice and place the order. The phone arrives and it looks and feels every bit as good as you thought it would. Savour this moment – because you know what’s going to happen next….?
That’s right, after giving it just a quick charge you fire it up and an all too familiar symbol on the screen makes your heart sink once more – just one lousy bar of signal! No matter how hard you try to convince yourself, you just know that you have bought yet another phone that will be difficult or impossible to use at home!

It's a sad fact that the walls of your home or office will absorb a lot of the energy that modern mobile signals are made of – not so much of a problem where you have perfect coverage, but for those of us not so fortunate it can be a real pain! To get around the problem would involve the networks erecting a lot more base stations and we all know that this just isn't going to happen.

Well, this inevitable disappointment may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the new Access Gateway from Vodafone, you can have the equivalent of your very own personal base station in your own home or office. The Access Gateway works by using your existing home broadband connection to route your mobile voice and data calls, as well as texts via the internet. The device can handle 4 simultaneous calls and takes up no more space than a conventional router. Even if you have no signal at all where you live the Access Gateway will provide a means of making and receiving mobile calls with perfect clarity and maximum efficiency. No more wandering to the end of the garden or leaning out of windows – you’ll wonder how you ever managed without this little box of tricks before?

The Gateway, which uses Femtocell technology, will work with any Vodafone 3G handset and in any location – provided you have a broadband connection of over 1Mbps. Vodafone have tested the Gateway for over 6 months and claim that the technology works perfectly, even when the broadband line is in heavy use.

The downside is that it isn’t free, the device will be offered as either an outright purchase or as part of a monthly calling plan. However, anyone who’s struggled to make a call from home may well think that the convenience this device offers is well worth the initial cost? There are plans to develop the service further by offering the equivalent of Wi-Fi in your home, which may appeal to some, particularly when you consider that many people experience some difficulty with traditional Wi-Fi equipment. It remains to be seen, however, whether this idea will take off – but it could herald a  whole new way of connecting to the mobile networks inside buildings and that has to be a welcome advance?

The Vodafone Access Gateway is available to buy on-line or from Vodafone stores and is expected to cost around £160. Monthly rental plans will also be offered for around £5 a month on its own, or as part of a mobile airtime contract.

Author Helen Davies