"No matter how easy it is to install these cells, such installations are still the responsibility of the network operator - who owns the licence to use that spectrum."

Tis a pity that mobile handsets aren't equiped with a consumer wireless technology, such as bluetooth, allowing it to talk to a whatever-cell that is plugged into the cell owners LAN and from there VoIP to the rest of the world. Oh, hang on, they are.

So what's missing? Is it just a matter of plonking appropriate software on handsets and routers? Why are we farting about with cells and SI prefixes? Why is my existing router at home not already able to provide a service for my existing handset?

Oh, and can we please stuff a bird-shit-coated VHF antenna up the arse of the marketroid who came up with "super-femto"? Pretty please?

As I understand it, the 51 weeks / 6 months prison threat would be for foreigners bringing their own little mobile network into the UK. Brits could quite happily go to a more deregulated (or give-a-shit) country to avoid high call costs. It all depends on who has jurisdiction at any one point.

Does this mean that the operators of highly regulated countries would suffer because they couldn't charge when their customers go abroad? Or would those lax countries that don't care about radio spectrum licences reduce their revenue because visitors wouldn't be paying THEM to jump on their network?

Whatever. I doubt the current technology will hang around long enough for anyone to care.

Surely not, wouldn't it be the penalty in the country you have visited and operated in without a licence rather than the home nations sanctions?

Hope they remember to encrypt that GPS data that their sending over MY network.

AIUI home phone cells have to have GPS (in the USA) so they can broadcast their location as required by the CDMA standard and return it to the provider control systems as required by the E911 find-the-handset system.

Of course one could require the owner to type in the location - correctly - using the configuration browser interface, but would they? No.

- Huge

@Adam Foxton

"Or is this just a "Ooh, the iPhone's awesome. It's the ONLY 3G phone, don't you know. 3G- brought to you by Apple" type article?"

Is your comment one of those "Ooh, the iPhone's a terrible crippled phone. It's the ONLY bad phone in the world, don't you know. Bad phones- brought to you by Apple" type comment?

Get over your whiny attitude already. Your anti-Apple fanbois stench is a bit overpowering.

--Written from my iPhone. The best phone I have ever seen or used.

"offer 3G connectivity for iPhone users from the comfort of their own home, and over their own broadband"

The point is that if your broadband is coming over cable, you might not then have any need for a telephone landline. That's quite a substantial saving in the UK. I dunno about other parts of the world.

"nothing but the threat of 51 weeks in prison (in England, six months in Scotland)"

I'm certainly not risking the threat of six months in Scotland just to use an iPhone abroad.

When you are connected to the "picocell" or "femtocell" the phone will have a different identifier showing on the Screen (called an Alpha Tag).

So if you were on the picocell and the operator was O2, you may see "O2 - pico" perhaps. If not then you are camping on a Macro cell.

Also any traffic flowing between the picocell and the network will over an encrypted communications channel. I would not expect anything different...Hacker's would have a field day otherwise.