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It is designed to be placed
in each home and enable ordinary mobile handsets to communicate with the mobile network through
broadband connections, including cable or xDSL. Femto cells operate on the same licensed
spectrum that is used in macro and micro cells but only have a range of tens of meters, to cover the
area within the home. They bring a whole new value proposition to mobile operators and enable
them to enter a previously unreachable market: the home environment.
The Femto Forum has been formed by seven early femto cell innovators mostly in the UK
(including IPAccess and Ubiquisys) during July 2007 andattracted several heavyweights during the
summer of 2007, including ZTE, NEC, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, Motorola and ZTE.
The forum currently consists of 50 members that are distributed across the mobile value chain. The
forum has created four working groups tackling technical, business and marketing issues and aims
to minimize fragmentation in this new market.
(Although pico and femto cells may appear similar, a pico cell connects to a base station controller to
extend coverage in areas without, e.g. enterprise locations. Femto cells may include some form of a
base station controller and are more intelligent).
What femto cells really propose is revolutionary for mobile and fixed operators, assuming that they
aim to provide more than just coverage in the home. Saying that, femto cell application is most likely
to depend on the region it is being deployed in: Western Europe is most likely to use femto cells for
advanced data services, while North America is more likely to see femto cells for coverage in remote
areas where low traffic does not justify a typical base station.
As far as usage is concerned, I can t see a solid scenario for femto cells. They can bring mobile
wireless data to the home with the added benefit that users can access the new application with a
device they are already familiar with. However, I don t see how a mobile device can compete with a
PC or a notebook computer for data services most commonly accessed at home: Web, email, social
networking and multimedia. Especially if mobile operators build WiFi in a femto cell box to enable
computer networking, I think thatfixed operators will get quite alarmed.
I can see three ways for mobile operators to bring something of interest to end users with femto
cells:
New services: Mobile operators can release new services that can target mobile devices with very
high speed connections. Intelligent architectures that distribute intelligence to the edge of the
network (including IMS) are ideal for this setting but then again, user behavior is nearly impossible to
predict, and deploying this kind of services would require heavy capital expenditure on behalf of the
mobile operator.
New terminals: This is a far more radical approach. Mobile operators can promote devices with
increased display and input capabilities to be used in femto cells and outdoors. This would be
possible only when proof of concept has been achieved and economies of scale are in place to
justify for the need to change handsets (or get an additional one).
Or they could simply add coverage where there isn t to start with and build a stable of applications
after end users are familiar with cell at home solutions.
Fragmentation is managed and technical issues are resolved (e.g. Nokia Siemens has released a
femto gateway that speaks to other vendor femto cells via a proprietary interface).
Operators market (and subsidize) the devices very carefully
Mobile operators should work with fixed operators to setup some form of cooperation to enable
femto cells, or assess whether they should offer fixed services themselves.
Educate end users that health risks are minimal (as with guideline compliant macro/micro cells)
However, as it stands (and in the short term future) I wouldn t pay anything to have a femto cell at
home, when I can enjoy voice calls through circuit-switched (or VoIP) practically free and have a
very fast broadband connection with WiFi.
Would you?