Femtocell Contract Awards and Trials Begin: a Long Road to 74 Million Cumulative Shipments by 2012

The much hyped femtocell market has taken its first steps toward realizing its considerable potential. ip.access recently announced a frame contract win with Orascom for the use of ip.access picocell and femtocell products in all of its subsidiaries. This comes at a time when trials are gathering pace - with notable carriers such as SFR, France Telecom, and SoftBank beginning serious trials that are quickly moving beyond proof of concept and the lab.

Stuart Carlaw, ABI Research wireless research director, states, "Current trials will be fundamental in helping the industry move to a common technological approach, finally putting to bed some of the over-exaggerated claims on interference and macro network disruption." He continues, "Indications are already surfacing that a split RNC architecture is beginning to emerge as the preeminent solution, ensuring time-to-market and performance requirements are met."

Many in the industry are quick to point out the challenges presented by interference, cost, management, and business cases; however, the side issues of IPR, net neutrality, broadband connection quality, and perceived health issues may prove to be the most significant in the long run.

Femtocells offer network carriers the opportunity to offload a lot of the traffic from their network assets to subscriber home-based cells that are backhauled through the IP core. This is a special consideration, given the increasing amount of time consumers use cellular handsets in the home. The operating expense savings from not having to cater to voice traffic alone provides enough motivation to build femtocells into the business plan.

"Some form of standardization or common drive toward a unified goal would be beneficial to total market conditions," adds Carlaw. "Fragmented technology markets with low associated volumes do not make cost optimization an easy task."

Posted to the site on 24th September 2007