You may never have heard of a femtocell, but you might use one in the near future. A femtocell is a device that acts like a minicell phone tower to connect your cell phone or smart phone so you can make calls, grab your e-mail, surf the Web or run apps.

AT&T is shipping these devices and Verizon Wireless has been doing so for a while. For Verizon Wireless customers, it typically means getting access within its service area where you might otherwise have insufficient signal strength. For AT&T customers, it might allow you to use your iPhone apps where it might have been too congested earlier. As we see more Google Android phones, and Palm devices that run apps, we might see femtocells as a solution to the congestion issue on other cellular networks too.

I had a chance to play with a Samsung Network Extender, which is a femtocell from Verizon Wireless, and found some interesting aspects.

A femtocell is basically a way for you to get cellular service from your broadband Internet connection -- almost the opposite task of getting Wi-Fi Internet connectivity from your cell phone. You plug the femtocell into your Local Area Network using standard network cables, and your broadband Internet connection acts as the conduit to your personal cell phone tower, allowing you to make the calls you want. So if your home or office is in a low cellular signal area, also known as a dead zone, your femtocell increases your cell signal.

With the Verizon Wireless Network Extender, you need to register your phone, giving you the ability to lock out other local phone owners from stealing your cell signal. To do this, you need to be within 15 feet of the Network Extender. Then you can make your calls just as you normally do as far away from the Network Extender as 40 feet. Up to three Verizon Wireless cell phones can use the Network Extender simultaneously; but you can designate a list of 50 phones and the priority that each phone gets when trying to connect to the Network Extender.

Femtocells are great solutions for large office buildings where cellular signal doesn't permeate readily. You also can take this personal cell phone tower with you when you travel; but the federal government lets you use it only where the cell carrier from which you bought it has service.

So the Samsung Network Extender, and presumably other femtocells, needs to be in a place that it can verify that the location is on the right cellular map, in this case, Verizon Wireless. The Samsung device does it by finding a GPS signal and determining your location from that. It then matches your location against the Verizon Wireless coverage area to see whether it can give you signal.

If you're not in the right place, or if it can't verify your location, you can't connect. That means you need to place it near a window or outdoors so it can find the GPS satellite signal. I found out the hard way because my office used to be deep within a building, far from the windows and couldn't get signal.

Another interesting caveat is that you can start a call using the Network Extender and seamlessly move to the standard cellular network; but to move your call from the standard tower to your Network Extender, you'll need to restart the call. Not a deal breaker; just slightly inconvenient. And they don't advise having multiple devices in one place.

Expect a typical femtocell to cost you $100 to $200 for the equipment with no extra connection fees.

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