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    T-Mobile offering in-home signal booster starting September 7th?

    T-Mobile offering in-home signal booster starting September 7th?

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    Though T-Mobile USA already offers Wi-Fi Calling as a way to limit its customers' woes in area of weak reception, it might be looking for a more comprehensive solution. TmoNews has shots of internal documentation suggesting that the carrier will be offering signal boosters to customers starting next Wednesday, September 7th, but you won't just be able to walk into a store and buy it -- they'll be shipped to customers, and sales reps are encouraged only to offer it as a last resort if the customer threatens to cancel service. On the upside, the unit will be free of charge, but you'll need to agree to a two-year contract to get it -- and if you walk away without returning it, you'll be subject to a cancellation fee as high as $500.

    AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint already offer femtocells that plug into users' home internet connections and create small clouds of cellular service to boost reception in spotty rooms, but it seems that T-Mobile's product might be different. Notably, the documentation states that you "must receive 1 bar of 3G service anywhere in the house," which leads me to believe that this truly is a signal booster, not an active femtocell -- all it's doing is amplifying an existing signal from the cell tower, not creating a new one. That approach presumably requires less architecture and management on the back end (or none, really), unlike a femtocell, which must be recognized and activated by the carrier's equipment.

    Source: TmoNews