Invasion of the pico-cells

Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 February 2007 09:24

Business IT - Networking

Many analysts are predicting that cells even smaller than pico cells, so called 'femto cells' - designed for installation in the home - will become a major challenge to fixed line and other wireless services such as WiMAX.

A report issued last month by Unstrung Insider, a paid research service of CMP Technology's Light Reading news service, concluded that "Ultra-low-cost home base stations that allow wireless users to communicate across any IP access network using a standard mobile handset will challenge WiFi VoIP for dominance in the consumer fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) market,

It went on to say: "The major benefits of home base station technology for mobile operators include the ability to provide capacity that scales in line with subscriber demand, a reduced requirement to deploy additional macro carriers to support indoor users, and an opex requirement that is kept in check by IP backhaul paid for by the customer.

By deploying capacity indoors, where it is most needed, cellular operators also gain greater flexibility to introduce disruptive pricing and bundling strategies, allowing them to accelerate capture of wireline voice minutes and grow revenues. Over the long term, there's an opportunity to develop services that take advantage of low-cost, high-speed Internet access to mobile devices, which could potentially extend to applications that use handsets to access and control multimedia home networks.

However it cautioned that both technical and economic challenges must be overcome before femto cells can be widely deployed. "On the radio access side, equipment suppliers still need to prove that these devices can coexist with the macro network without negatively affecting its performance," notes Gabriel Brown, chief analyst for Unstrung Insider and author of the report.