Larger Femtocells are principally designed to provide coverage over small areas such as the home or SOHO (small-office, home-office) environments. Larger buildings such as public buildings and businesses fall into the domain of picocell and distributed antenna technology. However, there is potential for groups of femtocells to scale up into larger environments, just as Wi-Fi originally grew from the home to office environments.

However they also provide scope for improved quality and personal bandwidth for users to gain dedicated access to high-rate services such as mobile TV and wireless music 'sideloading’. They also provide a means to enable tariff structures and billing which is targeted at the home and family group. Note also that although 3G femtocells are expected to be the biggest market initially, we are also seeing 2G and indeed Mobile WiMAX designs emerging.

Femtocells work with all existing mobile handsets whereas there are very few dual-mode (Wi-Fi/Cellular) handsets on the market. Forcing users to change handsets, or to limit their choice prematurely, makes the proposition less attractive to consumers. Furthermore, femtocells use licensed spectrum, which allows the operator to guarantee a good quality of service. Wi-Fi spectrum is unlicensed, and therefore subject to a much higher risk of interference and poor quality. Additionally Wi-Fi significantly reduces handset battery life while femtocells actually improve it by reducing the power which the handset needs to transmit.

Surveys suggest customers are willing to pay for exceptional coverage in their home, major savings on their phone bill as well as various new services, and all this is available on all handsets not a few ‘special’ models. Additionally the trend towards ‘quad-play’ bundles which incorporate mobile services with broadband, voice and other home services create an opportunity for customers to get a single bill and single point of contact to ensure all the services operate smoothly together.

As a result they can benefit from significant economies of scale in manufacturing and costs will reduce rapidly with volume. As mentioned before, operators may not attach a simple price to a femtocell but may provide the equipment to users as part of a bundled deal or an extended contract period. In quantity, there is no reason why femtocells need to be any more expensive than Wi-Fi access points to the end customer. When integrated with a home gateway costs could be even lower, and we’ve already seen announcements on these lines from major vendors such as NETGEAR and Thomson.

No different to a Wi-Fi access point.

They are extremely intelligent devices capable of sensing the use of frequencies around them and adapting their operation to minimise any disturbance while staying within parameters which are set by the operator. Ultimately they benefit from the certainty of operation on licensed frequencies which can be carefully managed by the operator, unlike the licence-exempt frequencies used for Wi-Fi. Calculations and trials have demonstrated that femtocells actually reduce the overall interference levels in a network by reducing the loading of the outdoor network.

Femtocells are quite different to existing cellular base stations and are designed to set themselves up in accordance with their cellular environment. So planning does take place – the difference is that it is automated.

No. It simply means that only licensed spectrum holders can offer femtocells. Obviously mobile operators already fit into this category so they will be the predominant providers of femtocell services.

A key role of the Femto Forum is to negotiate with regulators to amend some of their policies and a working group has already been established to do exactly that. There are also several technological approaches to ensuring femtocells are only used in their intended environment.

Femto Forum members are designing their products to fully comply with the guidelines for human exposure to electromagnetic emissions issued by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and other relevant regulatory authorities.

The Femto Forum currently has more than 70 publicly announced members.

On the vendor side we have innovative startups and large OEMs. In addition, we already have several mobile operators on board, including major international mobile operator groups and numerous regional players of all sizes. The Forum’s working groups contain the biggest mobile operators and vendors in the world.

The key to ensuring femtocell technology reaches its potential is for the Forum to encourage all the various vendors to collaborate to ensure their solutions are interoperable and meet the expectations of operators. In addition the Forum needs to lobby the regulators for various alterations of their policies and finally to ensure a common marketing strategy can be adopted across the femto eco-system.

The business case for femtocells is similar in Europe, Asia and North America, with the major drive coming from more established operators with 3G. Femtocells provide an opportunity to address coverage problems in the home without the need to increase the number of outdoor base station sites. It is thought that some 30% of users would buy femtocells for better coverage in their homes and this is before thinking about lower tariffs and additional services.

They also need to protect their spectrum, ensuring that femtocells can co-exist with their outdoor network. Operators need to be able to provision, manage and monitor femtocells, as well as integrate them into their core networks without excessive changes. Users need to be able to install them with a minimum of fuss. There are Forum working groups looking into all these issues.

Because the femtocell uses the subscribers’ own broadband connection for backhaul, operators make substantial opex savings and can therefore offer lower in-home tariffs.

The price to the end user will be very attractive and will be driven by volume. Prices can be good if the volumes are there.