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Written by David Chambers
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 18:29 |
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A significant number of users do not have good indoor coverage for 2G and this will be worse for 3G, especially where high data rates are attempted. There is a strong case to install a femtocell for coverage in the house simply for basic cellular coverage alone
This has been quoted as one of the major drivers for takeup of the Sprint Airave offer in the USA, where the large geographical spread means in-house coverage can be poor in many areas. This offer focusses on lower cost voice, with no benefit for data services or SMS, and is seen by some as a wireline replacement offering when coupled with so-called "Naked DSL" or Broadband Cable. It uses a 2G femtocell (CDMA 1xRTT) and is not capable of high speed data, but works with any standard CDMA phone. However, it must be pointed out that all users in the home would have to use the same network operator. If existing contracts need to expire, or where "Mates Rates" are used to call/text others in the same social or business group, then this could be inconvenient. Whilst most of the current hype is based around 3G UMTS technology, the majority of users still only have 2G GSM phones. With a high phone replacement rate, and the incremental cost of 3G phones reducing, this problem will disappear over time. However, in the short term it could make the switching costs for a family high. An alternative would be to deploy a 2G femtocell, although for reasons explained in our technology section, the cost of these continues to be high and business models using indoor only GSM frequencies has not yet been proven successful.
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