I am very fascinated by the latest buzzword in the Telecom Industry, that is "Femtos".
A Femto or a Femto Cell (referred as a Home base station) is a device intended to provide a good cellular coverage inside a home (typically full signal strength). Generally a drop in the network coverage is observed due to the in-building penetration loss. So essentially having a mini-cell tower per say inside the apartment itself will offset the above problem.
A Femto will typically be an integration of RN, RNC, and PDSN functionality into one box. From operator's standpoint this will mean an additional network element in its network. Large scale deployment of Femtos will indeed lead to the network facing scalability problems.
But I personally think that the Femtos will bring a great value add to an operator, predominantly due to two main reasons:
1) Improved network coverage without the need to have an additional macro cell tower.
2) Improved network capacity as the traffic will be carried over existing broad band connection to the operator's core network, resulting in no additional backhaul costs.
For subscribers, the value add will be in terms of unlimited usage of voice and data for an incremental cost without using up the valuable airtime minutes. Femtos will essentially turn their Cell Phone into a sole multi-purpose handheld device and also solve network connectivity problems.
WiFi is seen as a potential competitor to Femtos as UMA technology is quite developed and enjoys the first mover advantage but I think that Femtos edge out WiFi due to two main reasons:
1) To use WiFi, the phones need to be WiFi enabled which is not the case today as hybrid phones are costly.
2) The battery life is an issue.
Recently there has been a lot of traction in the industry about the FemtoCells as seen in Mobile World Congress as well as in CTIA. Sprint has already rolled out its Femto service in Airrave, also AT&T apparently has signed $500m deal with ip access to roll out the FemtoCells in its network and Vodafone has also issued RFP's for Femtos. Femto vendor Airvana has also signed a global OEM deal with Motorola for its Femto solution.
As Nothing is perfect, Femtos also face several problems which the operators and vendors will have to overcome to make this product a success in the market. I would reckon that 2009 is going to be the year of Femtos.
For completeness, in my next post I will highlight the problems that Femtos face....
9 comments:
Hey Rohit,
Nice post!! Femtos seem to be really cool and upcoming technology!!
I was just wondering, since it will be used inside a home with the device radiating some signals, is there a possibility of health hazards? Just curious!! may be it is a stupid doubt altogether!!
Sprint has launched AIRAVE in collaboration with Samsung which is a femto-cell
http://www.sprintenterprise.com/airave/
@ Shraddha,
There are no health hazards asscociated with Femto usage. Its the same frequency that macros use.
Also the power level is gona be much lower.
@ Rooaban,
Yes its the Samsung femto which is 1xRTT only.
Good post!
ah the subtle mention of airvana... marketing 101 :D
A full disclosure note is generally a best practice when you mention your employer in a blog post. :)
Or you can mention it in your profile.
Very well written. I started work on a Femto analysis yesterday and I actually got a good briefing from your post (saved me the trouble of searching for docs). Keep it coming! And yes, do share the url with your manager;)
Nokia Siemens Networks and Pirelli Broadband Cooperate on 3G Femtocells
Nokia Siemens Networks and Pirelli Broadband Solutions signed an agreement for cooperation on 3G Femto Home Access solutions. The deal matches Pirelli’s femto-enabled CPEs with Nokia Siemens Networks' 3G Femto Home Access network solution. Femtocells are a new way of improving 3G coverage in homes. In this concept, the CPE is installed at the subscriber’s home in the same way as xDSL/WiFi modem.
The companies said their combined solution means an opportunity for operators to extend their 3G coverage and introduce new attractive services for subscribers.
The Pirelli Multiplay CPE portfolio will offer 3G femtocell functionality integrated with diverse broadband access technologies (ADSL2+, VDSL2 and FTTH) and with Pirelli’s Epicentro CPE middleware and applications platform. Epicentro enables cooperative use cases between 3G phones and Pirelli’s access gateway, IPTV Set Top Box and 3G femtocell, and en
When Operators deploy femto, they would want an end to end solution and not just the femto box. So vendors supplies Femtos have to provide access solutions also
In future I expect Femto Standard to specify the access rules so that it saves a lot of hassle for operators
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