The first 3G femtocell has been launched in Europe, and has been launched by Vodafone in the United Kingdom claims a report on hardware.slashdot.

Femtocell connects to handsets in a room and links those handsets to the mobile network over broadband and gives the user better coverage while taking traffic of the provider’s network.

The broadband provider could complain though as it will be carrying a rival’s traffic. At present Vodafone is not pushing the data angle however femtocell could work on dongles and laptops. Vodafone may be the first, but looking at the list of speakers at the World Femtocell Summit they may well not be the only ones.