Femtocells, Wi-Fi to Play growing role in mobile networks

Some people may still discuss the value of femtocells, but the tide has turned: in 2010, the number of femtocells worldwide has exceeded the number of macrocells, according to the Femto Forum.

Femtocells are small base stations that site operators in homes or businesses to improve coverage and capacity for users. While there is still some debate about whether femtocells or Wi-Fi is a better choice, most experts are now saying they will work together the two technologies.

"We're seeing that fleeting competitive pitch," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum, an association to support the sector femtocell. Now, many creators femtocell are including Wi-Fi in their products. In this way, end users can attach to Wi-Fi network for data services and use the connection of the mobile phone for the voice. Ubiquisys is a company that has introduced the new femtocells that include Wi-Fi during the Conference.

"Network community is a one or not," said Steven Glapa, senior director of field marketing for Ruckus Wireless. "We will Have ' femto and WiFi and all added together will address the problem." Ruckus makes Wi-Fi access points that operators can integrate in their WANs.

Towards the end of last year, the number of femtocells in the United States has reached 350,000, exceeding for the first time the number of macrocells there, said Saunders. Worldwide, there are 1.7 million femtocells in use than 1,2 million macrocells said.

The timing is right for even more growth of femtocells because many operators are upgrading their networks to LTE, the next generation mobile technology. At the same time they realize that users want to consume an increasing quantity of data. Femtocells can help increase the capacity for operators, but deploying femtocells requires planning of radio frequencies. It is easier for operators to plan femtocells in new networks, rather than add them to an existing network.

"[LTE femtocells] won't be new devices that are deployed years after the network is built," said Todd Mersch, Director of product line management at continuous Computing. NTT DoCoMo is an operator that has been explicit about femtocells in his work of network upgrade plans, he said.

Femtocells can also help those who are struggling with finding new sites to their base stations, a pursuit often expensive. Femtocells are physically much smaller than a base station, so you can hang in many types of paths. "They can disappear in a building," said David Swift, product marketing manager at Alcatel-Lucent.

Still, for some operators, sticking with Wi-Fi instead of femtocells. T-Mobile late last year said that many of its Android phones would ship with a software that allows people to use Wi-Fi to make calls and send SMS and MMS messages. That offload traffic from mobile network T-Mobile and move the drawback of backhaul to Wi-Fi network.

T-Mobile invested backend system from Kineto four years ago that allows you to manage the use of Wi-Fi, including counting the minutes of use over Wi-Fi connection against the plan of the Subscriber. They could have made the choice to stick with Wi-Fi easier but a company Executive said it was a clear choice.

"Femtocells have a math problem and a problem of customer service," said Joshua Lonn, Director of product development for T-Mobile. From the point of view of investments, purchasing femtocells T-Mobile would cost tens of millions of dollars, he said. Many customers of T-Mobile already inexpensive Wi-Fi router that can serve as an extension of coverage. In addition, most are now smartphone with Wi-Fi.

In addition, femtocells can be difficult to install, he said. "They are a pain to set up and a network optimization," he said. "Wi-Fi are robust. Why do something complicated like femto?

The disadvantage of currently using Wi-Fi is that users are still actively enable Wi-Fi on their phones before using it. But both Kineto and Ruckus they talked about work happening internally and in standards bodies to make roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

Nancy Gohring covers phones and cloud computing to the IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @ idgnancy. E-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com, Nancy