T-Mobile invests in home base station firm

T-Mobile has revealed it’s the lastest mobile operator to flirt with femtocells – a kind of mini base station for the home – by investing an undisclosed amount of cash in femtocell maker Ubiquisys. The investment, made by T-Mobile Venture Fund, comes ahead of an expected commercial launch of a femtocell service later this year.

Femtocells will let operators “more effectively bundle mobile and fixed broadband services, and to differentiate themselves by offering a new generation of web 2.0 mobile applications based on home presence and sharing data with the home network” according to T-Mobile.

Femtocells really hold a lot of promise. Not only do they boost indoor 3G coverage, but they open up the promise of all the converged services that BT Fusion tried to, only without the need for a special dual-mode handset. With the amount of interest femtocell technology is generating among operators, I get the feeling it wont’ be long til we all have base stations at home.