Ericsson unveils femtocell

L.M. Ericsson, the world’s largest network-equipment provider, announced the launch of the company’s femtocell product, news that could stand as a major event in the evolution of the wireless industry by giving cellular carriers the ability to compete directly with wireline carriers.
“This is a major technological breakthrough,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, an Ericsson vice president. “Ericsson’s femtocell solution enables mobile operators to compete on the fixed-access market, offering price-competitive, innovative and secure services to their customers.”
Ericsson said its femtocell product supports GSM and W-CDMA cellphones as well as Wi-Fi and ADSL connections. The product is essentially a miniature base station that allows users to run their cellphone conversations through a wired connection in their home.
Ericsson explained that its femtocell product, which it will sell to wireless carriers, will allow operators to strengthen their relationships with subscribers, and that it also provides an incentive for all users in a household to have the same mobile operator in order to get “home-area” prices.
Ericsson said its femtocell product will be available through select carriers starting in the middle of this year.
Ericsson’s entrance into the femtocell market, which until now has been populated by much smaller players, could bring the issue of femtocells to the fore. Ericsson’s support for the femtocell market could also push more operators to sell the devices to end users.
However, femtocells bring up a number of issues for carriers planning to sell the devices.
First up, carriers will have to sit down with DSL and cable providers to determine whether there will be charges assessed for using their connections to access a cellular network. After all, these connections effectively help cellular carriers offload traffic from their network, but DSL and cable providers are not likely to take the traffic for free.
Second, carriers have to figure out how to charge users for accessing their network via femtocell base stations. Customers will be billed for airtime.
Third, there will be regulatory hurdles since femtocell base stations operate in licensed spectrum. The potential for interference among femtocell base stations hasn’t been determined and likely won’t be until products come out of labs and get put to use in field trials. Once interference levels are exposed, technology developers will probably tweak the base stations to reduce interference to the lowest points possible, but regulations will probably become part of the ecosystem as carriers get closer to offering femtocell base stations.