Comments on: Here come the FemtoCells

By: Like Fixed-Mobile Convergence, Femtocells on a Road To Nowhere

Like Fixed-Mobile Convergence, Femtocells on a Road To Nowhere — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:05:26 +0000

[...] Here Come the Femtocells [...]

By: Sammo

Sammo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:53:16 +0000

It would be better to get something like the Wilson stuff that gets you an extra 50 miles with it’s 3 watt booster. http://www.wilsonelectronics.com http://www.alternativewireless.com/cellular-antennas/wilson-antennas/wilson_cellular_amplifiers/direct-connect-amplifier.html

By: Verizon Wireless Network Extender Femtocell Is a Ripoff

Verizon Wireless Network Extender Femtocell Is a Ripoff — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:47:43 +0000

[...] get better coverage of your Verizon wireless line. Of course, you would need to pony up $250 for a femtocell gizmo, pay an additional monthly fee and use your own broadband network (for which you already pay a [...]

By: Verizon Wireless Network Extender Femtocell is a Ripoff

Verizon Wireless Network Extender Femtocell is a Ripoff — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:42:16 +0000

[...] get better coverage of your Verizon wireless line. Of course you would need to pony up $250 for a femtocell gizmo, pay an additional monthly fee and use your own broadband network (for which you already pay a [...]

By: Rupert Baines

Rupert Baines — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:22:38 +0000

Google & femtocells

"Femtocell technology and access point pioneer Ubiquisys Ltd has secured $25 million in a round B funding that included Google and existing backers, bringing the total venture capital raised to date to $37 million."

UNSTRUNG has a long piece, discussing the implications and if this is a hint on Google's ambitions to be a wireless operator.

I'd love to know what their thinking is - got any ideas...?

Of course, Ubiquisys are customers of ours (almost everyone doing femtocells is a customer of ours!)

Cross-posted to the Google thread

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:11:11 +0000

Om, what I’m saying is that I don’t think carriers love it. The idea of smaller cells for local coverage/capacity improvement is fundamental to the cellular concept and is thus decades old. Yet for all those decades carriers have largely spurned such technology, instead focusing on how to increase in-building penetration and capacity through improvements to existing macrocells (see Rod Nelson for some really laughable public statements in support of this logic-defying approach). What carriers publicly support and what they actually deploy are too different things. Remember 3xRTT? What about beam-forming overlays for increased 2G capacity? What about self-install repeaters? What about Crown Castle’s DVB-H network? Look, it’s good PR for carriers to claim support for some hot new technology, but marketing and engineering are rarely on the same page. The same goes for equipment vendors — they are always ready with some vaporware product that has that hot new tech, but how often do you see it actually go commercial?

By: Rupert Baines

Rupert Baines — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:08:42 +0000

As well as the manufacturer announcements (Netgear & Thomson are two of the largest suppliers of access points in the world, so they do understand the market!) it is worth noting the carriers: Vodafone, Orange, Softbank & Sprint have all recently made announcements about their significant plans to deploy femtocells.

It is worth stressing this: some of the benefits are to users (primarily better coverage), but there is a very clear econmomic case for the operators (reduced capex, reduced opex, increased service revenue, lower churn etc).

There is obviously one respect where there is some truth to Jesse's point - never believe anything till it has already happened.

But technology is usually more fun (and more lucrative) if one looks ahead a little. And on that basis, a lot of the smart money (carriers, maunfacturers and VCs) is ewxpecting this technology to pay off.

Rupert Baines, picoChip

By: The Law of Mobility » Blog Archive » Enabling Technology: Week of 07/01/07

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:29:40 +0000

[...] Femtocells [...]

By: Veture Itch

Veture Itch — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:55:14 +0000

VCs do believe in ABI forecast – this week picoChip, one of fabless startups developing femtocells, has secured $27 mln.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:28:42 +0000

Jesse

i think the big reason carriers seem to love it - because it sits in their gateway so they still have a lot of control over the network and less firewall issues etc. THat would be logical.

However, as you rightfully noted - there is a big gap between announcements and reality, but lets keep watching and see what happens to this market.

By: Anil Raj

Anil Raj — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 11:58:36 +0000

The idea of moving radio capacity from outdoor cells to small indoor cells is fundamentally sound. This frees up scarce spectrum resources etc. However, the largest challenge is provisioning femtocells: Unlike WiFi APs which are sort of plug-n-play, a 3G femtocell is much more tightly integrated into the host network’s base station controllers etc. and will require a complex “getting started” sequence which will be vendor specific.

By: ron

ron — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:56:06 +0000

actually, ABI's numbers are even more absurd that what you have in your article... they claim 36 million sold in 2012, 70 million deployed by 2012.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:02:27 +0000

Om, despite all the recent press, I still refuse to believe in femtocells until they are actually being offered by carriers. Companies talk up products all the time that never actually see the light of day. The idea of femtocells is not new. The issues remain the same: The device will only work with a particular carrier, so it better be cheap enough to be easily subsidized. Can the ultra-controlling likes of AT&T and Verizon actually trust mere customers to not dick around with a device that could screw up the greater network? If this is using broadband as backhaul, how big a pain in the ass will it be to configure around firewalls? What happens to services like this and UMA if cablecos decide to start blocking/deprioritizing it? Until proven otherwise, this one sits alongside cell on blimp.

By: Jesse Kopelman

Jesse Kopelman — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:43:11 +0000

Shawn, femtocell support for e911 is very easy. The range of a femtocell is only about 100 feet and as such we can just assume that all users have the same location as the femtocell itself. Basically, this is the same as landline e911.

By: Shawn McCollum

Shawn McCollum — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:37:55 +0000

I wonder how e911 will be affected by the use of femtocells. From what I understand e911 for wireless works by connecting with a tower. If I make a 911 call will my femtocell send along my location or am I in the same or worse boat as voip customers.

By: Ajay

Ajay — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:27:13 +0000

David, the femtocells are a smaller version of the regular cellular base stations. Of course there are a ton of technical challanges relating to frequency planning, interference, security etc. in addition to the business case issues…