Says networks have dealt well with data surge
Alain Maloberti, VP, Network Architecture and Design, Orange Group, has poured a little cold water on the femtocell community’s immediate hopes to be integral players in the development of heterogenous networks.
Maloberti told Mobile Europe that although he sees femtocells having a role in providing better indoor coverage in some cases, they are not yet ready to be deployed in big numbers. There are two reasons for this, he said.
“The first is that they are not yet fully plug and play,” Maloberti said, “and also if you have a lot of them they cannot be used in the same frequency as macro cells as it causes interference to the macro layer. This is why we are not considering femtocells yet as an offload solution.”
Femtocell vendors make good play of the SON capabilities of femtocells, as well as their low overhead in installation and management, but Maloberti remains to be convinced.
“They are progressing but it is a work in progress, there is some discovery and neighbor relations there, but not at the point that we can have a large number of femtocells in our networks,” he said.
Maloberti said he preferred WiFi as an offload solution, and Orange has taken steps to introduce community WiFi whereby users who opt-in to let other users use their network are given access to the WiFi networks of other users in the community.
Maloberti also said that the operator has managed to avoid the network issues other operators have experienced through growing data use, due to a policy of rolling out HSPA coverage wherever there is UMTS, as well as using WiFi offload. In 2008 the operator saw a 2x increase in data and that more than doubled again in 2009.
As for another network innovation that several vendors are proposing, and that has been generating a little buzz at MWC – the cloud RAN – he was more positive.
“I see the overall plan developing in different steps. Independent of other steps, the first step is the integration of the RRUs (remote radio units) in the antennas. That doesn’t change the rest of the architecture and all the players are working on the same kind of thing. Then once we have done this, the second part is to put together a number of baseband units at a central site. This will take more time as it is a complete change of architecture. Finally the move is to commercial hardware and virtualisation capabilities.
“There are several different points that will occur in time, but overall I think it’s a good thing.”