France’s SFR has become the second European operator to commercially launch femtocells, the heavily-hyped ‘home base stations’ that aim to improve indoor network coverage. Manufactured by Ubiquisys and using Kineto Wireless’ femtocell network gateway, SFR is selling the devices at EUR199 and marketing the service as ‘SFR Home 3G.’ The service works with an ADSL connection from any ISP, not just SFR. According to Wireless Intelligence, SFR is the second-largest operator in France with 19.5 million connections and a 36 percent market share. SFR is 44 percent owned by Vodafone, with Vivendi being the majority shareholder.

Vodafone UK launched its femtocell service last summer, whilst other commercial launches include AT&T, Verizon and Sprint in the US, and SoftBank in Japan. Question marks remain over the business model for successful deployment of femtocells, as some people feel that users should not be expected to purchase a device that enhances indoor coverage when that responsibility arguably already lies with the operator.