It look like AT&T may be following in the foot steps of Sprint by offering their customers in home cell phone base stations.

According to a report on Ars Technica, AT&T has been asking in a customer service survey if they would be interested in a femtocell base station for their home.  A femtocell station is a device that allows your cell phones to communicate with an in home device that connects to your Internet connection, and then transmits all of the data over that line.  The best known example of this technology so far in the USA is the Sprint Airave, but it is still relevantly unkwnon.

The exact wording of the question being asked of the customers may give some idea of why AT&T is finally pursuing this service line.

AT&T’s new product is a small, security-enabled cellular base station that easily connects to your home DSL or Cable Internet, providing a reliable wireless signal for any 3G phone in every room of your house. The device allows you to have unlimited, nationwide Anytime Minutes for incoming or outgoing calls.

While the Sprint Airave has the ability to service the more common CDMA phone band, the fact this specifically mentions 3G makes you wonder if this might be an effort to boost sales of the iPhone 3G more than anything.  Many people have by passed getting the iPhone because of a lack of 3G service in their area, but if they could now get full advantage of their phone at least in their home.

While this is obviously a technology that helps the phone companies by taking some strain off their networks, and helps them not have to build more towers, they still end up charging you for the physical device, and then they charge you a monthly service fee for being provided with a service… that helps them and works off of your Internet connection.  There is no doubt that as a Sprint Airave user myself it is nice to finally have five bars in my house, but the math doesn’t always add up as to why I pay so much more to use my own phone.

There is no information on when testing might begin on the AT&T devices, but apparently they are already in use in the homes of their employees.