Telecom companies are the victims of their own success, as they wrestle with new solutions for managing the data explosion. Designed to ease these traffic burdens, femtocells are poised for rapid growth. Femtocell basestations act like Wi-Fi routers, offering personal cell service in the home or office with perfect mobile voice coverage and high data rates (see “The Femtocell Market Gets Set For Rapid Growth”).

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Originally known as access-point basestations, femtocells hook into the telecommunication service provider’s network via a broadband connection. They typically support two to four active mobile phones in a residential setting and eight to 16 active mobile phones in an enterprise setting.

Femtocells are an alternative method for delivering the benefits of fixed mobile convergence (FMC). Most FMC implementations require a new dual-mode handset that works with existing unlicensed-spectrum home/enterprise wireless access points. Femtocells, on the other hand, require the installation of a new wireless access point that operates in the licensed spectrum.

As networks evolve from 3G to 4G and the emerging Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard, femtocells will play a role. Femtocell basestations aren’t yet widespread in homes and offices, though they’re poised for such growth thanks to two factors. First, femtocells are becoming a less expensive alternative to the huge capital expenditures involved with acquiring space for and installing large 4G communications towers.

Second, the higher frequencies of 4G systems degrade in-home and in-building reception, making such performance boosters necessary. In fact, data-centric 3G network operators are fast finding out that the traditional modulation methods at 1.8 GHz travel very poorly through the walls of buildings and homes.

“Femtocells eliminate this problem by putting the basestation on the same side of the wall as the user,” said Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing for picoChip Designs Ltd.

In-depth research by the Femto Forum has found that the addition of femtocells to the communications network allows femtocell users to consistently receive data rates much closer to those of LTE and WiMAX connected to macro cells. The research supports the case for operators planning their future LTE deployments.

Figure 1. This installed Colo-Node HSPA system from Public Wireless is the first 3G metro cell that uses femtocells from Ubiquisys. Up to four Ubiquisys modules are used, each powered by the Ubiquisys Femtocell Engine software.

“This research shows that femtocells provide a pronounced user experience improvement while also delivering measurable financial returns for operators,” said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum.

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