Next-Generation Deployment

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The current femtocell deployment growth rate illustrates that we can expect more deployments in the near future. However, what’s really exciting is how these deployments are set to change. Globally, we have predominantly seen residential 3G femtocell deployments. But the scene will change as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX femtocells hit the market and deployments move beyond the home into the enterprise and outdoors.

The case for next-generation network (NGN) femtocells is every bit as strong as it is for today’s 3G networks. Our research found that femtocells provide the best possible LTE and WiMAX user experience and improve the operator business case for the new networks while also offering alternative rollout models and supporting new services. One radio study concluded that femtocells allowed users to consistently receive data rates that were much closer to the LTE/WiMAX headline than those connected to macrocells.

Femtocells enable this performance by providing a household or enterprise with a whole cell’s capacity rather than sharing capacity with a much larger number of people. They also eliminate the in-building penetration issues associated with the use of high frequencies for mobile broadband. On the financial side, the business case for LTE or WiMAX actually improves with femtocells due to their offload capabilities.

NGN and 3G femtocells are also moving beyond the home. In response to demand from operators, the vendor community has already developed femtocells for the enterprise and is busy working on outdoor designs. Outdoor models can supply coverage in rural areas and capacity in dense urban locations. It is additionally easy to see how such models could have a dramatic impact in developing markets when paired with satellite backhaul.

In metropolitan areas where mobile broadband is rocketing, the impact of femtocells could be revolutionary. New macro basestations can take two years to deploy, whereas femtocells can be deployed in a fraction of the time. This is crucial when, for example, a new Starbucks store opens and its customers, browsing the Internet on their handsets or laptops, immediately suck the capacity out of a macro cell. In this instance, femtocells serve as the cellular equivalent of a rapid response team.

North American and Asian operators are also leading the calls for the development of new femtocell services that leverage the presence of the mobile device in the home or enterprise zone and use it to trigger different events. For instance, when consumers enter the home, their phone can automatically receive personalized reminders from family members, upload photos from their mobile device directly to their home network PC and/or digital picture frame, or download their favorite TV shows and podcasts.

While femtocells once looked like a radical technology, they increasingly now resemble the logical progression in mobile networks. The history of cellular has involved increasing spectrum reuse by installing greater numbers of cells. The size of the jump provided by femtocells may be larger than we’re used to, but it continues the basic trend. As the technology starts to bring cell coverage to areas never previously thought possible and adds a new dimension to mobile capacity and applications, the question isn’t why you would deploy femtocells, it’s why you wouldn’t.