Femtocells and Personal Base Stations

As mobile phones become more common, so do femtocells which are sometimes called personal base stations. They extend coverage and capacity indoors. Because users continue to cut their landline and rely solely on the mobile phone, personal base stations see increasing usage by making the mobile phone more productive in the residential setting. It will provide higher data performance, better voice quality, enhanced emergency services (it can provide your location more accurately), and convergence of VoIP services.

The key issue with femtocell adoption is the interference with macro base stations and with other femtocells. Additional capabilities will need to be installed with the femotcells to prevent this.

Femtocells are commercially available in Japan and are in trials throughout the US by most of the carriers. In the west, Femtocells are seeing cautious acceptance. In this post the author watches in horror as 3G dongles gain acceptance over femtocells in spite of high costs and limited bandwidth.

For all things Femtocell related check out this website.

Best regards,

Hall T.