Healthy growth ahead for femtocell sector

While the Femto Forum just released a white paper touting how femtocells can take traffic off the macrocellular network, AT&T Mobility’s femtocell traffic still counts toward its total data usage as the femtocell is primarily designed to enhance the user’s voice call quality experience.
Worldwide, the femtocell market continues to grow, and should reach nearly 49 million femtocell access points and 114 million mobile users accessing networks through femtocells by 2014, according to a new report from Informa Telecoms & Media conducted for the Femto Forum. “Healthy growth is anticipated throughout the forecast period with femtocell unit sales reaching 25 million in 2014 alone,” Informa said.
“Femtocells allow the vast, and ever increasing, amount of data being consumed indoors to be offloaded from the macro network. Not only does this significantly improve the femtocell user’s mobile broadband experience, it also improves the experience of outdoor users by freeing capacity in the macro cellular network,” the Femto Forum said.
Thirteen operators have confirmed commercial launches of femtocells, including Vodafone Spain, AT&T Mobility, Softbank in China and Japan’s KDDI. Spain is Vodafone Group plc’s second commercial offering. The operator initially launched femtocell service in its U.K. headquarters.
AT&T is taking a cautious approach to its femtocell rollout since it introduced the Cisco-made device in March at CTIA Wireless 2010. AT&T said femtocell use will count toward its new caps on data use, as it has for all customers but those on unlimited plans. AT&T said 96% of its MicroCell users have Wi-Fi routers in the home, which is better suited to home mobile data usage.
“The femtocell market is experiencing maturity with many of the largest operators in Asia, North America and Europe now offering services. Global operator demand for femtocells is undeniable and recent femtocell standards milestones can only enhance this situation further. As mobile data traffic continues to rocket, femtocells look set to become a vital component of next generation mobile broadband deployments and this is reflected in the increasing interest in enterprise, metropolitan and LTE models,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.