Posted by Barlow Keener

Femtocells could revolutionize cellular service in terms of diverting cell traffic off the network, providing great service in buildings and homes, increasing bandwidth speed, and, most significantly, increasing the service providers’ footprints outside their licensed areas.  Cell phone service providers, like Sprint or T-Mobile, would be able use femtocells to off-load traffic to their customer’s provided internet access.  Also, the carriers would be able to locate small antennas in areas inside and outside their licensed territories, with the help of their customers.   Customers would suddenly enable a service provider to offer service in tough valley in a small town, or in a town located outside the provider’s service area.  One other important point is that the customer, not the service provider, would pay for the femtocell at the local Staples or cell phone store.  For the first time, service providers could lower network costs.

For customers, femtocells solve several key problems.  I regularly survey friends about their cell service.  The number one complaint is poor coverage in their homes.  Femtocells are primarily designed to overcome this poor in building deficiency in cell phone service.   Blogger and media consultant Shelly Palmer noted and complained that AT&T did not deliver service well enough around the New York City area to serve his iPhone.  At least in the homes with femtocells, the problem with poor connectivity would be eliminated.   The other problem solved by femtocells is delivering service in areas not covered by the carrier.  For example, in Dorset, Vermont there is no Cingular/AT&T service.  Femtocells could dramatically increase coverage for the customers in these areas.

Equipment providers of consumer broadband router devices will gain in units sold from new femtocell technology.  The future will be a femtocell built into every WiFi and DSL/Cable router.  GigaOm  reported this month that 2Wire, owned in part by AT&T, was going to include femtocell technology in 2Wire’s DSL modems.   In addition, Netgear is teaming with Ubiquisys and Thompson is teaming with NokiaSiemens  to deliver femtocells for the home.  

Femtocell technology is racing against the competing dual mode WiFi phone technology.  The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2007 that T-Mobile was providing IP based calling over WiFi using dual mode phones provided by Samsung and Nokia.   Also, see GigaOm’s report on the T-Mobile dual mode WiFi service.   The positive about the dual mode WiFi phone is that customers can receive almost all of the same advantages as a femtocell without having to purchase a new device in the home. 

The race is on between the two leading methods of providing cell phone service in the home.   The clear out front winner at the moment is the dual mode WiFi phone because it is operating in the U.S. market place with positive results.   A user noted in GigaOm:   “I’ve been testing the [dual mode WiFi] service in Boston for the past 2 weeks. Works pretty well.”   As quoted in PDA Street In-Sat projects there will be 200 million dual mode WiFi phones by 2010.