Development of New Femtocell Services, Applications Said to Drive Uptake
This has been the “year of progress” for deployment of femtocells, low-power, wireless mini-base stations that provide short-range communications indoors, Femto Forum Chairman Simon Saunders said in an interview. The number of commercial services has probably tripled in the past year, with 17 running worldwide, he said. The technology is so useful that the forum is looking for ways to embed it in businesses, public spaces and, eventually outdoors for LTE services, he said. The momentum is expected to accelerate next year as multiple uses for femtocells launch, said Aditya Kaul, ABI Research practice director, mobile networks.
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Operators with commercial services include Vodafone, now in its fifth market, Verizon, AT&T, DoCoMo in Japan and Telefonica in Spain, Saunders said. There are also deployments in France and Portugal, and China Unicom has launched in 50 cities and is ramping up, he said. There are now more femtocells delivering mobile services in the U.S. than macrocells, he said.
There’s no need for regulatory change to enable use of femtocells since they operate only in unlicensed spectrum, Saunders said last year (CD Sept 25/09 p8). Still, the forum is talking to regulators worldwide about the value of femtocells for spectrum sharing, he said. The technology also spurs competition by allowing operators to reduce the number of macrocells they deploy and use the savings to equip customers with free femtocells, stimulating entry into a market not previously available, he said.
The EU Radio Spectrum Committee decided two years ago that no regulatory action was needed, because femtocells should be considered part of an operator’s network and therefore already subject to national spectrum rules and the conditions of its spectrum license, a European Commission spokesman said.
Although there are no major regulatory concerns associated with femtocells, several “wrinkles persist,” Saunders said. Questions about requirements for lawful interception of communications over femtocells and about emergency calls are unresolved, he said. The forum is working with standards bodies on requirements that femtocell equipment must meet for intercepts and with regulators to ensure that they treat Wi-Fi and femtocells the same, he said. It shouldn’t matter if an area is covered by one or the other, but there must be a consistent approach across technologies, he said. This position isn’t yet accepted everywhere, he said.
The rollout of femtocell technology dovetails nicely with discussions on the need for more spectrum, because the growth of mobile data continues to challenge operators, Saunders said. Femtocells take data off backhaul, cutting the incremental cost of delivering gigabytes of data, he said. That means demand needn’t be throttled by the growing need for data and by high prices, he said.
The forum is looking at opportunities to embed femtocell technology in places outside the home, Saunders said. Because they operate in unlicensed spectrum, don’t need additional frequencies and are low cost, femtocells can also be useful in offices and businesses, even large enterprises, he said. Beyond that, there are opportunities for the technology in public spaces such as shopping malls, where it can be used by customers in open areas and in shops for mobile applications, he said.
Beyond that, femtocells could be taken outdoors, notably for LTE, Saunders said. There are no commercial uses yet, but the forum is working with the Third Generation Partnership Project to ensure that standards are available from the earliest release of LTE and a special forum group, headed by Vodafone, is examining femtocell architecture, he said. Several operators are interested because they need small-cell architectures to meet future LTE demand, he said. DoCoMo has challenged manufacturers to build them quickly so it can deploy them, he said.
Most operators now use femtocells to solve “black holes” in cellphone coverage, Kaul said. A second use case is for data services that give users mobile Internet access, he said. The nearly one-to-one relationship between the user and the femtocell offers unlimited bandwidth, higher speeds and lower latency, he said.
A third use is for applications and services such as family alerts, Kaul said. The technology, for instance, can recognize from a mobile phone when a child gets home, triggering an SMS message to the parents. It could also be applied to Facebook and other social networking sites or be used to send security alarms if an unrecognized mobile phone enters the femto zone, he said. Only one operator, in Japan, is offering this type of service but European and North American providers are thinking about it, he said.
Kaul expects such services to take off as operators look to increase revenues and cut customer churn, he said. The momentum is there and there will be more operators and more services using femtocells next year, he said.