Femtocell market update for week of 16 Mar 2009

Infonetics says femtocells will thrive despite the recession

The latest report from Infonetics Research forecasts sales of femtocell and FMC network equipment will grow at a healthy rate through the economic downturn and then will really take off in 2011, hitting $8 billion in 2013.  According to the report’s authors, some operators are seeing the economic slowdown as an opportunity to lure more FMC subscribers.

The positive stance is certainly welcome, but one has to query the report’s finding that there were 8.6 million FMC subscribers in 2008, of which the vast majority were UMA based.  This sounds rather high, given that the UMA market consists mainly of Orange France and T-Mobile US, and only 6 months ago Orange appeared to be claiming around 1 million UMA subscribers at most.

ABI is more cautious, but still optimistic

While predicting a tough year for RAN vendors generally, ABI Research believes the femtocell market will suffer only a temporary delay during 2009.  The company’s revised 2009 forecast estimates femto shipments at slightly less than a million, but senior analyst Aditya Kaul believes the market is “gearing up for a big push”.  He says there is cause for optimism in that a femtocell investment can be done in stages with fairly low entry points, making it easier to justify in a tight financial market.

Femto schizophrenia from Kineto?

Hot on the heels of Kineto’s announcement of new features for its femto gateway, the company’s marketing VP appears to be questioning the validity of the femtocell market.  Admittedly, the journalist who interviewed Steve Shaw has an obvious bias, titling his article “Who needs a femtocell?”, and describing femtocells as a “racket”.  Nevertheless, Shaw comes across very negative on femtocells (almost to the point of scare mongering on issues such as interference that are now quite well characterised), and he is correspondingly favourable to the dual mode WiFi proposition.  It seems that Kineto would prefer to keep femtocells in the enterprise – an application Shaw himself has recently discussed in somewhat more positive terms, and which matches the emphasis of Kineto’s new femto gateway features.

AirWalk launches CDMA enterprise femto

AirWalk has launched the EdgePoint PRO femtocell (actually a picocell, by the look of it) targeted at enterprise deployments.  It supports up to 28 users, has a maximum transmit power of 200mW, and is available for either 1xRTT or 1xEV-DO Rev. A.  The device has a clustering feature that enables soft handoff between multiple units, and with the macro network.

Picocell misconceptions abound

Given that pico effectively means tiny, it’s a strange but common misconception that picocells are large, expensive basestations requiring dedicated E1/T1 backhaul.  For example, Strata8’s commentary on femtocells and picocells this week says that picocells range from 64-channels up to 192-channels.  Light Reading also says this week that picocells support up to 100 users at one time.  These capacities are way too high for a picocell (and possibly even for a microcell).  GSM picocells, for example, are typically single TRX (meaning 7 voice channels, or 15 with half-rate AMR) or sometimes 2 TRX.  Several vendors offer small, inexpensive picocells that use Internet grade IP backhaul (just like femtocells, in fact, except with higher capacity and longer range).

In other news…

• STOP PRESS!  Comcast still saying nothing on WiMAX femtocells.
• Verizon femtocell prompts subscriber to cut the cord!
• 3G to drive the need for indoor phone coverage in China.
• Sweden approves reuse of 900 MHz spectrum for 3G – competition for femtocells?
• Consumer spending on mobile data is recession proof.
• FM(U)C is not enough.
• Kulu saves the day (using the Sprint Airave)!  But these users found a couple of glitches.
• Are femtocells relevant in developing markets? (Yes, for business use, says Think Femtocell.)
• A word on femtocells from the enterprise IT manager.
• Gerson Lehrman says femtocells are a smart move for AT&T.
• Fierce Wireless says European femto deployment delays are not a surprise.