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Much of the appeal of the femtocell to operators rests on the fact that, unlike a Wi-Fi gateway, the device remains firmly under the carrier's control, in its licensed spectrum. So the latest move by femto specialist Ubiquisys moves the goalposts somewhat - the firm is tying up with FON, the community Wi-Fi pioneer, to provide a shared model for the femto.

FON made its name with its Fonera Wi-Fi router, which offers free access to users who agree to share spare capacity with others within range. Although this emanated from the community WLan movement - the antithesis of carrier models with its focus on free, shared access - FON managed to persuade major operators like BT to partner with it to extend the reach of their services.

Now it wants to pull off the same trick with femtocells, and is working with UK-based Ubiquisys on a 'Femto Fonera', which would allow cellcos to create mobile communities, in which spare 3G capacity would be shared securely.

Ubiquisys CEO Chris Gilbert told EETimes: "Femtocells introduce new elements to the community concept, making the experience for users even simpler, providing a lightweight architecture for presence-based community applications, and adding the reassurance of the existing trust relationship with mobile operators".

The operator would retain full control of access rights and could use the femto's presence triggered authentication to support different services for the primary user and the community users. The new partners said they were in discussion with several mobile operators to evaluate the Femto Fonera concept.

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