Femtocells in India: The personal mobile towers
Femtocells are considered as solutions to all poor quality mobile network problems at our home or office.
A femtocell is a small wireless access point that transmits voice and data cellular signals within a home or small office. It connects to our mobile operator's network through our broadband Internet connection.
Femtocells provide better coverage, improved voice quality and also improve data download and upload speeds. Customers are offered attractive tariffs for using femtocell at their home or office. Typically the range of a femtocell is around 10 meters. Femtocells are usually sold at low cost by a Mobile Network Operator to its customers to improve their network quality at their home or office. This in turn helps the network operators by avoiding the expensive up-gradation of their infrastructure (cell towers, etc.).
Femtocell uses network providers licensed spectrum and works with existing handsets. This technology enables automatic handover between macro-cell (outdoor) networks with femtocell (indoor) network. Mobile phones will display a different network name when they come under the coverage of femtocell to notify the user. From a user's perspective, it is plug and play, there is no specific installation or technical knowledge required — anyone can install a femtocell at home.
Since 3G has inherent challenges such as unreliable indoor coverage even though a majority of mobile traffic is generated indoors. The Femtocell solution enables mobile operators to provide high quality 3G “five bar” mobile coverage indoors while providing operators the ability to differentiate their service in terms of quality and innovative applications.
Like a femtocell, Wi-Fi can also provide higher data speeds on mobile phones. But Wi-Fi often requires the user to perform some type of configuration whereas femtocells automatically connect to the user’s phones when in range. Also, Wi-Fi does not generally enhance voice coverage while femtocells do. Finally, using Wi-Fi can drain mobile phone batteries faster since the Wi-Fi is an “extra” radio to be powered by the phone. Femtocells use the same 3G radio and therefore do not cause this type of drain.
The Femto Forum has setup a Services Special Interest Group (SIG) to look into the innovative femtocell applications that can be offered to customers like remote control of the home appliances such as air conditioning, security devices etc when out of the house in a secure manner.
Femtocells are not prevalent in India yet, but overseas telecom operators like Vodafone in Europe, and AT&T in the United States, are already offering customers commercially available femtocells. Femtocell promises 3G services with significant Capital and Operating expenditure reduction for India's 3G mobile operators who must ensure low network costs after the high cost of 3G licensing, while meeting the needs and expectations of their customers.