SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




Share
Unified Communications: February 27, 2009 eNewsletter
February 27, 2009

Femtocells in the Enterprise

By Steve Shaw, Vice President of Market Development

Femtocells (News - Alert) are, by most accounts, a product for subscribers to use in their homes. When the 3GPP considered a name for the femtocell, the group chose Home NodeB (HNB). The femtocell industry trade group Femto Forum has a logo that is a little yellow house. Even the look of early products from femtocell leaders, Ubiquisys (News - Alert) and ip.access, have stylized, consumerized presentations.



 
           
Lately, there’s been a lot more talk about femtocells for the enterprise. However, enterprises already have their own solution (and market): the picocell. Picocells have had a solid market in providing coverage over a relatively large area, such as an enterprise, an airport, or some other public location; and while picocells have been a solid enterprise solution for some time, mobile operators see two primary issues with their usage: opex and capex.
 
The operational expense (opex) concern typically surrounds the installation and deployment of the picocell. Picocells are truly mini-base stations to the mobile network. Therefore, their deployments must be carefully managed by mobile network technicians, and they must be fully integrated into the existing mobile cellular network. The result is a very reliable approach to improve coverage.
 
Picocells are designed to support a large number of active voice and data sessions over a wide location, and consequently need a significant amount of processing power which translates directly into capital expense, or capex.
 
What is driving the talk about femtocells for the enterprise? Clearly, operators see the ‘plug-and-play’ nature of femtocells as a significant advantage over traditional picocell solutions. If an enterprise were complaining about coverage, it would certainly be more cost effective to send ten femtocells to an IT manager to sprinkle around the office versus conducting a full site survey with a team of cellular network engineers.
 
Certainly there is a cost/capacity trade-off between picocells and femtocells. While more costly, picocells provide significantly larger capacity and throughput. Yet there is a tradeoff. Suppose the actual enterprise coverage ‘problem’ is the boss’s office. Any IT manager would be happy to spend $250 (the current cost of Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless’ Wireless Network Extender femtocell) to improve coverage and contentment in the corner office.
 
Today, mobile operators recognize the advantages of femtocells in an enterprise environment. Mark Fossier, Orange Group CTO, was recently quoted saying “We’re quite keen to see how femtocells work in the enterprise,” going on to suggest that remaining technical issues with femtocells will hamper their deployment in the home zone, but can be largely overcome when deployed in the enterprise.
 
For the nascent femtocell industry, initial deployments could be a quick way ‘across the chasm’; enterprises typically have tech-savvy IT managers who could provide better support in early femtocell deployments, overcoming the inevitable growing pains of a new technology. Of course, it’s more likely that enterprises would justify a $250 investment in a femtocell as a ‘business productivity tool’ than consumers would be willing to pay that much to improve home coverage.
 
While the US market is certainly heading towards consumer femtocells in the short term, the potential for benefits to enterprise customers should not be ignored.
 

Steve Shaw (News - Alert), Vice President of Market Development at Kineto Wireless, writes the UMA: Mobile Convergence and Beyond column for TMCnet. To read more of Steve’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Greg Galitzine

(source: http://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/topics/mobile-communications/articles/51419-femtocells-the-enterprise.htm)








Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2023 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy