Fixed Mobile Convergence

The ever-growing number of mobile connections and the increasing bandwidth consumption due to high usage of video, audio and gaming content via mobile phones have been exerting immense pressure on mobile operators to strengthen their networks. Femtocells (News - Alert), small cellular base stations that can be installed within enterprise premises, have proven to be an appropriate solution for addressing this demand in a streamlined manner.

Infonetics Research, a well-known research and analysis firm that primarily devotes its attention to the telecommunications markets, has revealed in its latest study report that the global mobile markets are going through a transitional phase, as the adoption of small cells or public space femtocells is consistently increasing worldwide.

Titled “Femtocell (News - Alert) Coverage Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey,” the new report underlines how mobile operators have been formulating new strategies to enable a seamless deployment of femtocells within their service areas. Key aspects of the femtocell market that need to be kept in mind for successfully addressing this growing need are types, technologies, timing, installation locations, indoor and outdoor backhaul technologies, drivers, technical challenges, adoption barriers, mobile traffic offload technologies and protocols associated with the femtocell deployment.

“For our femtocell coverage strategies survey, we interviewed mobile operators from around the world that have deployed small cells such as microcells, picocells, and/or public space femtocells, or plan to in 2012,” commented Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research (News - Alert). “Five are already running commercial public space femtocells networks, and almost half will do so sometime this year. Clearly, femtocells are growing beyond their original residential target market, moving into public space coverage, and becoming a full member of the ‘small cells’ set. Our survey reflects the fact that we are at the beginning of the mobile world’s transition from macro-centric to the next generation environment of small cells augmenting the macro RAN as mobile operators attempt to deliver ubiquitous coverage and high capacity in areas of dense user population and high broadband usage.”

In the new study by Infonetics Research, it was found that around 83 percent of mobile operators have already deployed small cells such as microcells and picocells, while the rest of them intend to deploy the technology by the end of this year. Further, the report suggests that mobile operators deploying femtocells or small cells get attracted towards the technology due to better in-building coverage and data optimization in addition to the non-expandability of the macro network as it is becoming more and more complicated for them to add new cell sites within their networks.

Previously this month, Infonetics Research announced that according to its latest survey, femtocells top the list of technologies operators are using to deliver wireless coverage indoors.

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