Virgin Media Plans Indoor Mini-Masts for Better Coverage and Speed

When you travel, the first thing you check for is whether the place you are going to stay has phone coverage. The need for universal mobile coverage has risen so much that Virgin Media has come up with some brainwaves.

To get ample coverage, we see masts hung left, right and center, and now those masts could, under Virgin Media’s plans, be bonsai sized and placed in your living rooms. The cable operator is thinking of handing over to its customers a personal mobile phone signal.

This, according to the company, could be done by using transceivers the size of a paperback book. The company says that the network that personal computers depend upon is, in the near future, going to be overloaded.

Next year, the government is putting on auction the 4G high-speed mobile internet spectrum. Virgin media is looking to bid for a major share along with other major mobile operators like Vodafone and O2.

Landline companies like BT are also expected to take part in the action, but the company hasn’t said anything on that matter yet. Virgin and BT have been locked in broadband wars, ousting each other with high speeds.

BT now offers internet access in some areas with speed of 110 megabits per second, which is more than 10 times the average home connection. Provision of fast internet is a money-earner for telecoms companies.

The miniature masts that Virgin will provide are known as femtocells or nanocells. These would have a range of about 100 meters.

These masts can be used in living rooms and studies and offices so as to gain a wide coverage at higher power. With the end of the 4G spectrum auction, mobile networks will proceed putting up more masts and transceivers for linking up high-speed internet.

Many companies are entering the femto cell world as a solution for the overcrowding wireless spectrum and as a technology to better manage their spectrum.  Ubiquisys, a femtoforum founding member based here in the UK, has been a pioneer in developing femto technology that is in use world-wide.  At this point, we do not know whose femto cell technology Virgin Media will use.