A significant number of users continue to report poor mobile coverage in their homes. There will always be areas which are uneconomic for mobile operator to reach. They range from rural areas hidden by geographic features including dense forestation, hills to buildings constructed from stone and concrete. Modern building materials, such as reflective glass coatings on windows, reduce the signal levels inside buildings which also contribute to poor service.
This situation has worsened with the migration from 2G to 3G, which in many countries operates at a higher frequenecy (2100MHz rather than 900MHz), and thus has shorter range. It also reduces the quality of the radio link and therefore the peak data rates achieveable.
There are several options open to residential customers to solve poor coverage problems:
Almost all residential small cells are based on 3G technology, and are deployed in areas where the vast majority of users now have 3G capable phones.
View a list of current mobile network operators offering residential small cell/femtocells to their customers.
The graphic below (courtesy of Ubiquisys) illustrates how the residential small cell operates.
Could wireless service completely replace wireline in some scenarios? Perhaps it depends on just how fast internet broadband needs to be, and whether wireless can perform adequately at lower cost than wired or fibre connections.
I had the opportunity to witness what it’s like moving into a brand new tower block apartment in London recently where some relatives moved in. I was struck by the contrast between the high standard of basic services provision with the thoughtlessness of cellular service. The industry seems be getting distracted with 5G while simply ignoring the needs of its customers.
2015 promises to be the most successful year for residential femtocell shipments, with confident forecasts in the region of 3.5 to 4 million units shipped. We consider what's driving this market segment, the reasons behind strong demand for 3G and how the transition towards LTE will affect it.
Martin Wren-Hilton tells me he's never had so much fun. His job as Head of Mobile Innovation at TalkTalk is to figure out how to squeeze a high quality mobile network service from a slither of previously unused spectrum. He presented at MWC on what's involved, their test results to date and how it could evolve.
On Friday, Free commercially launched a residential femtocell module for their existing Freebox. This will capture 3G calls in the home, providing much better signal quality and offload traffic from macrocells. Since Free, a new mobile operator in France has to pay substantial annual roaming fees to France Telecom, the switch to residential femtocells has a strong business case for them too.
We've been reporting about this plan since two years ago, in July 2011, so it's nice to see it come to fruition, and clearly indicates a execution of a calculated long term strategy which could affect the industry worldwide.
We examine the business drivers, reveal who's behind the design and manufacturing, and consider whether this approach has the same potential to shake the telco industry up as have low cost airlines in the aviation sector.
A significant number of users continue to report poor mobile coverage in their homes. There will always be areas which are uneconomic for mobile operator to reach. They range from rural areas
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The term Enterprise addresses any non-residential in-building including hotels, convention centres, transport hubs, offices, hospitals and retail outlets. It's not just intended for businesses to
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Urban small cells (sometimes also named metrocells) are compact and discrete mobile phone basestations, unobstrusively located in urban areas. They can be mounted on lampposts, positioned on the
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A rural small cell is a low power mobile phone base station designed to bring mobile phone service to small pockets of population in remote rural areas. These could be hamlets, small villages or
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