Recently I noticed during a insomnia driven walk that my neighbors all seemed to be fellow insomniacs. While it’s none of my business why they were all out on the porches and driveways in the early morning hours talking on the phone, it still boggled me as to why so many? Eventually I realized that they were not getting good reception inside their house on their cell phones.

Apparently trying to use their cell phone inside is a hit or miss proposition. My cell phone never gave me problems but I have heard from friends at times how they want to toss their phones out of car windows. However, new technologies do offer possible remedies but unfortunately both require high-speed Internet lines at the home where you are having problems with dropped calls.

One product is called a “Femtocell” and it acts like a miniature cell radio signal tower. It boosts reception inside of a building by a large margin,  but it’s a bit pricey for the individual consumer. Sprint was the first to offer “Femtocells” last year and AT&T and Verizon say they plan to roll out a similar service later this year. The “Femtocell” by Sprint is book-sized and connects to a DSL router. Then the calls are routed over the Internet. This will work in a building or house up to 5,000 square feet and it will work with any cell phone that Sprint carries.This will set you back about $49 for the base station and an extra $15 a month. Most subscribers have had positive feed back for this device.

T-Mobile has a somewhat different approach with it’s efforts on HotSpot@Home, a home Wi-Fi cellular phone service. It’s HotSpot@Home is cheaper than Sprint’s “Femtocell “service and costs only $9.99 a month for unlimited service in addition to a standard subscriber’s voice plan.Neat!

But here in lies the rub; a customer must already have a Hot-Spot WiFi enabled phone. Only seven T-Mobile phones have this capability at the moment but they do include the popular Blackberry. If you are lucky enough to already have one of these prized seven models, I would definitely recommend you sign up for this deal before they raise prices.

Hopefully this will help out some of you “chronic driveway visitors,” and if these two new technologies catch on, I might not see my neighbors as much wandering around their front yards with their cell phones in their ear.