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| Wednesday, 05 December 2007 | |
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Seemingly overnight, femtocells have gone from the status of ‘nice idea but still in development’ to the mobile industry’s latest craze.
At this year’s 3GSM event in Barcelona, a number of companies were demonstrating early prototype femtocells. Excellent idea everyone thought, loads of development work still to do, but definitely a winner for the future. Less than 12 months later femtocells are the hot topic with industry analysts falling over themselves to predict that femtocells will be appearing in a network near you shortly. The IDATE research group expects to see the femtocell market developing rapidly over the next few years. Although problems with standards and certain technical issues will mean few major rollouts in 2008, these will be quickly solved and the market is likely to take off in 2009/2010. IDATE predicts that 10 million UMTS femtocells will be shipped in 2010 and this number will rise to 18 million the following year. IDATE says major mobile operators are already issuing RFQs (Requests for Quotes) and it expects a number of femtocell contracts to be signed in the next twelve months with major network trials early in the New Year. Operators interested in the mass deployment of femtocells include AT&T, Telefónica O2 Group, SoftBank, Sprint, T-Mobile and Vodafone. For those who have been on a long holiday, femtocells are small, low cost residential base stations that enable users to make calls over any IP access network using a standard mobile handset. Femtocells can be 2G or 3G and are connected via a residential DSL line or cable to the mobile network where a controller aggregates the traffic. By using the broadband network as the backhaul, the femtocell provides all the normal base station services but with the advantage of low cost and simple installation. Essentially femtocells improve coverage, particularly 3G coverage, inside residential buildings. So what is the mobile operator’s business case for femtocells? Matia Grossi, author of the IMS Research report, “The Worldwide Market for Cellular Infrastructure, 2007” says, "The new wireless broadband technologies such as HSPA, WiMAX and LTE are making the business case behind femtocells appealing, by efficiently offering next generation mobile data services". Grossi goes on, "At the same time, the availability of cheaper multicore processors is pushing the cost of femtocells towards a mass market price". It is IMS Research's opinion that, while the technology itself is not groundbreaking, the business case behind femtocells is what is getting the attention of a lot of operators. The possible savings in terms of CAPEX and OPEX are huge. Also the added possibilities surrounding triple and quadruple play will finally deliver some of the benefits of FMC with the offer of cheap, mobile voice and data services in the femtocell/home zone. IMS Research believes that femtocells could be a new way for operators to reach out to new customers, in effect using them as a differentiator in markets where basic voice and SMS are commoditised. "Femto's open up a new competitive angle for operators with the potential to acquire market share from their rivals", Grossi says. "Operators that have both a fixed (eg DSL) and a mobile business could use femtocells as a way to exploit the synergies between the markets". Ian Channing |
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