One of the major concerns with the femtoJack is in regards to seamless handoff. More simply put the concern is in regards to what happens when someone is talking on their cell phone by way of the femtoJack and then they jump in their car and pull away while continuing their phone conversation. With femtocells seamless handoff is simple but while using the femtojack there are two possible outcomes. The first outcome will be that their phone call is dropped as they leave their femtoJacks range. In this case they will have to call the person back and be connected through their cell carriers signal in order to continue the conversation.
The second possible outcome will be that as they leave their femtoJacks range they will be able to continue their phone call without noticing any changes. In this case their cell phone will work with the femto Jack and their cell carrier to switch networks through a process called seamless handoff.
Seamless handoff is a common occurrence among cell phones that happens millions of times each and every day. During normal day-to-day use of cell phones seamless handoff happens as people move from one cell towers signal to another or from Wi-Fi calling to cell towers. When doing this the new cell tower that someone comes into range with grabs their call just as the cell tower they are moving away from drops their call, all in a split second without any notice from the user.
For cell carriers seamless handoff is a no brainer because they can handoff signals between their own towers or even between other carriers towers that they have shared service agreements with. For magicjack VocalTec LTD. and the femtoJack seamless handoff will not be as simple. In order from seamless handoff to occur cell carriers and VocalTec will have to come to some sort of agreement, an agreement that benefits both parties. We don’t see this agreement coming to fruition with easy though since there is little benefit to the cell carriers in agreeing to allow seamless handoff. VocalTec and the femtoJack are targeting cell carriers as their direct competition and attacking a huge source of revenue for these cell carriers. Seamless handoff for the device doesn’t help the cell companies at all and it makes no sense for them to help their direct competition.
Seamless handoff for the femtoJack would be awesome but we just don’t see how any agreement for such occurrence could be reached. Perhaps we are missing something?
