New research from Informa Telecoms & Media says mobile operator commitment to the home base station is rising
The Femto Forum released new research on Tuesday from Informa Telecoms & Media that indicates growing operator commitment to femtocells. According to Informa, there are now 12 service commitments to femtos, nine of which are commercial. This contrasts with eight femtocell service commitments and six commercial launches in November 2009.
“The femtocell market is undergoing rapid growth around the world with Asia, North America and Europe now having multiple deployments each,” says Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
With data traffic volumes growing exponentially, it is perhaps no wonder that mobile operators are keen to off-load cellular traffic onto fixed-line broadband connections that they don’t pay for. “The reason [for the growth] is simple,” adds Mavrakis. “Femtocells allow operators to deliver enhanced coverage at home, leading to an improved user experience that would not be economically viable with traditional network upgrades.”
But how much will customers use femtos for data, particularly as they will probably already have larger-screen devices hooked up to their broadband connections (on which they pay a monthly fee)?
Executives from Telekom Austria told Mobile Europe that when they trialled femtocells last year, customers used them primarily for voice. In places where are no coverage issues, femtos – say Telekom Austria – don’t deliver on the data offload promise. The Austrian operator’s interest in femtos consequently cooled.
A Femto Forum spokesperson insists, however, that data off load is an increasingly strong driver for femtocell deployments. “The vast majority of mobile data usage takes place indoors,” says the spokesperson in an email exchange with Mobile Europe. “Some operators have placed this statistic at over 90%. The reason for this is that the mobile handset is often more convenient than other devices for accessing data services as users have them at all times. This rocketing data represents a massive load on mobile networks and network upgrades are frequently uneconomical given the high cost per bit for delivery. Companies such as Qualcomm have said that small cells are the only means for continuing the growth in mobile capacity. Therefore, while extending voice coverage may be driving the early femtocell deployments, the next generation of deployments will be increasingly geared towards data.”
Informa expects the femtocell market to experience significant growth over the next few years, reaching just under 49 million femtocell access points (FAP) in the market by 2014 and 114 million mobile users accessing mobile networks through femtocells during that year. Healthy growth is anticipated throughout the forecast period with femtocell unit sales reaching 25 million in 2014 alone.