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. When doing this 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 anothers. When doing this the new cell tower that someone come 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 Ymax Corporation and the femtoJack seamless handoff will not be as simple. In order from seamless handoff to occur cell carriers and Ymax 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. Ymax 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 femtoJack 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. Maybe we are missing something?
The author of this blog is a 27 year old recent college graduate who has been blogging about different tech related topics since April of 2008. The femtoJack is just one of many tech related topics that he has written extensively about. 
The only way I could see it is if Magicjack negotiates an MVNO agreement with the carriers.
I don’t think you are missing anything. Operators paid millions of dollars for the spectrum that Ymax is using in subscribers’ homes under the guise that their license doesn’t extend into these homes. There is tons of legal precendent on this – all of it in favor of the operator. The FCC left some spectrum unlicensed just so homeowners would have a band in which they could transmit. This enables licensed signals to function without interference from rogue transmitters (like magicJack’s femto). Unlicensed spectrum is what WiFi and cordless phones use. As noted in your posting, the operators have zero incentive to enable these handoffs. The magicJack femto takes a cool full featured device like the iPhone and turns it into a voice only phone. Not sure I see the value there…..
I DONT THINK THIS WILL WORK BECAUSE YOU WILL BE USING A NUMBER THAT MAGIC JACK GAVE YOU AND IF YOU GET OUT OF RANGE YOU WILL BE ROAMING OR WHAT IF YOU HAVE AN ATT OR TMOBILE NUMBER FOR THAT CELL PHONE WELL MAYBE IM WRONG LETS SEE WHAT HAPPENS ONCE THIS FEMTO JACK COMES OUT
Lisa nailed it. The carriers will not give MagicJack the time of day.
Actually for the iphone the use of a wifi connection to the net would enable all the features you would be missing and femtojack would allow the calling. This is meant to be used to enable a cell user that lives in an area where cell reception is not good in your dwelling…yes I know shocking there are places in this country that have limited cell connectivity!
Also this would allow you to choose a plan with fewer minutes, keeping those pesky kids from using up all your minutes!! 
Mack… Are you on holidays? It’s almost May and no news since January?
NO NEWS IS NO GOOD.
lisa and jim…what cell service provider do you 2 work for…? -.-
August 2010, NO UPDATES, NO NEWS, NOTHING!
ok, how about a little tidbit gossip so was can at least say the topic is not dead.
This article is 8 months old now, I don’t know if there’s been any progress, but I think the only way this would happen is if the carriers were required by law to provide the seamless handoff. And/or maybe they could charge a fee for the service.
Lisa’s argument is NONSENSE. There is no guise. This is clear cut. Either operators’ licenses are exclusive even into someone’s home or it is not. And if it is not Femtojack is a go. And as far as I know from personal and professional experiences and experimentation, within the boundaries of someones private space they can operate varying frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum provided it stays withing said boundaries (which will merely require tweaking). Why didn’t you give one example of a case of your nebulous “tons of legal precedent on this – all in favor of the operator” speech.
Furthermore implying that the femtojack takes an iphone and turns it into a voice only phone and thus you not seeing the value in that, is like saying someone who has $100 and is given an additional $10 to use when they wish now only has $10. You make it seem as though once a smartphone is used with femtojack it can never be used as a smartphone again. That argument is sheer nonsense. The additional flexibility of being able to make overseas calls extremely cheap without using up my minutes at a time I so decide is a BONUS. And when I decide I don’t want to use said bonus I can go back to using the other features of my smartphone.
The development of the atom bomb was exponentially more difficult than this and yet it ultimately worked and so will this.
I agree with Chris. You seem to have a vested interest in seeing this not work. Too much hate. So which cell service provider do you work for really??