Here’s how one Sprint subscriber calculates the value of his AIRAVE femtocell:
“It was costing us $32 per month for our unlimited long distance land line and it would cost us an additional $25 per month to have the AIRAVE. So we are saving $7 per month with the AIRAVE, with the added bonus of having great signal quality in our house.
“Now, that was just saving on the elimination of our land line if you have a large plan you may find that you don’t need as many minutes because you don’t use minutes when you are at your house… I don’t even know how much of a savings it would be if someone was still paying per minute on long distance.”
This ties in nicely with the Femto Forum’s recent business case work (updated this week). That “a savings” thing does bug me, though.
Femto Forum and WiMAX Forum to co-operate on femtocell standards
WiMAX operators looking to improve in-building coverage and data throughput are behind the newly announced collaboration between the WiMAX Forum and Femto Forum. The collaboration will create standards that address QoS, provisioning, authentication, power optimisation, mobility management and other areas.
Sensational headline raises femto concerns
It’s that old chestnut again. Test specialist Epitiro has found evidence that policy management techniques used by broadband services providers pose “a serious threat” to femtocell voice quality. Since Epitiro first presented this about a year ago, I have been diligently scouring the blogs to find evidence of this happening in the real world. I guess it’s still early days, but many people actually report that a femtocell gives better voice quality than the macro network.
ip.access demonstrates how picocells save money
A new white paper from ip.access explains how picocells are being used by operators around the world to save money. Drawing on real-world experience in over 40 mobile networks, the paper outlines seven different ways that picocells help operators reduce both the capital and operational costs of their networks.
Wireless infrastructure market growing despite recession
ABI Research forecasts worldwide capital expenditure on wireless infrastructure should grow by between 1.5% and 3.7% during 2010, despite the tough economic climate. Senior analyst Aditya Kaul says operators are looking at alternatives to traditional macro base-station deployments, including in-building wireless systems and femtocells.
Meanwhile, EJL Wireless Research says contracts for mobile basestations are down slightly from Q1 2008. According to EJL founder Earl Lum, “demand remains heavily concentrated in Asia Pacific while Eastern Europe was the second most active region”. 3G represented 53.2% of total contracts.
Ajit Jaokar ponders femto services
In his Open gardens blog, Ajit Jaokar says it’s “hard to sell capabilities of networks themselves (or for that matter to charge for networks)”. “Customers understand services,” he says, before going on to examine femtozone applications. Jaokar belies that femtocells could be a valid exception to the tenet that services should not, generally, be coupled to networks.
Femtocells address Shannon’s law
Kevin Fitchard takes a critical look at femtocells in his Telephony Online article. He acknowledges that “ultimately the only way to grow capacity will be through spectrum re-use, i.e. shrinking cells,” but questions whether femtocells are the answer. “Millions of cheap femtocells could replicate the coverage of thousands of base stations in a metro network and add untold amounts of cheap capacity to boot, but they would create a networking planning and management nightmare,” he claims. However, this overlooks a number of significant technology developments by the femtocell industry to address the management issue. According to Will Franks of Ubiquisys, these advances “effectively eliminate the risk of nightmares.”
PJ Louis also sees femtocells as a potential solution to the Shannon’s limit, but objects on different grounds to Fitchard. “The current underlying switching fabric cannot handle femtocell site deployment configuration I am describing,” he says. “Think 5 pounds of stuff being jammed into a 10 pound bag”. This is a new one on me, I must admit.
Are enterprise femtocells a good idea?
ADC’s VP product management John Spindler attacks the idea that multiple femtocells can be used to provide coverage in enterprises. “Rather than using multiple femtocells, a better way to approach the problem is to use the signal from one femtocell (or “super femto”) and distribute it throughout the office with a distributed antenna system,” he argues.
Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders has edited a new book on femtocells. ‘Femtocells: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Technology’ is published by Wiley.
In other news…
- Percello unveils 16-user PRC6500 SOC for enterprise-grade femtocells / picocells.
- picoChip picoXcell™ PC312 femto chip makes EETimes top 5 products of the week.
- Amit Jain says femtocells are sticky.
- David Chambers says 4G may be the first step to IMS for MNOs…
- …and explains the link between IMS and femtocells.
- LTE and femtocells are an “essential symbiosis”.
Upcoming conferences
- Femtocells World Summit, 23-25 June, London (announcement ¦ website).
- IEEE ICC conference, Dresden (femto panel ¦ website).
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Airave, Epitiro, Femto Forum, Femtocell, femtocells, ip.access, LTE, Percello, picocell, picocells, picoChip, Ubiquisys, WiMAX Forum
