UK mobile operators plan home cells

Mobile operators plan to offer home base stations in Britain by the end of this year to improve coverage and to try to stem a loss of revenue from web calls made from Wifi-enabled phones.

The Femtocell system turns homes into micro cells of short-range coverage, dotted like islands among the "macro cells" created by the network of neighbourhood base stations.

The 'islands' can coexist using the same spectrum thanks to clever cell management.

The base station acts like a Wifi access point, using the subscriber's own internet service to link with the operator.

The immediate benefits to subscribers are that in-house coverage is much better, they will be able to use the same phone in and outside the house, and calls from home will be cheaper (though incoming ones will cost the same).

It should also be possible to achieve downlink data rates of up to 14Mbit/sec using 3G HSDPA, coupled with high uplink rates, but it is unclear how quickly speeds will ramp up.

Femtocell data links avoid some of the problems of macro HSDPA traffic, which may be slowed down by contention on the line and fluctuating coverage.

The system offers several advantages to operators: it is a quick and cheap way to extend coverage, it relieves congestion in the macro-cell airwaves, it gives them a foothold in the emerging digital-phone market, and it offloads some of the "backhaul" of data to the subscriber's own service provider.

How service providers will feel about this is another matter. Delegates and speakers at the International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells in London talked in terms of the system being offered as part of a bundle of services, including telephony.

But they were short on details of the pricing, while agreeing that it will be crucial. Subscribers will need a compelling reasons to fork out for a Femtocell base unit, which is likely to cost around 300 Euros in the first phase.

Even if operators subsidise the box, the cost will have to be packaged into the service bundle. And this will have to compete with dual-mode Wifi phones and an emerging range of DECT and Cat-IQ phones that can support both dial-up and free voice-over-IP calls in the home.

In Europe Dect and Cat-IQ even have their own spectrum at 1.9GHz, and so don't have to struggle to make themselves heard in the crowded unlicensed 2.4GHz band – one of the key advantages of cellular links.

Femtocell costs would come down with Wifi-scale volumes, but for that they would need standards to allow manufactures to compete making them for operators across the globe.

A new organisation, the Femtocell Forum , was set up just two days ago to create a standard.

But with rival digital-home links rapidly maturing there is a fear that operators will have to get femtocells into the market more quickly than a lengthy standards process would allow.

Louis Samuel, Europe vice president and chief technology officer of Alcatel-Lucent, said they will have to start off with proprietary technology. " We have already solved the major problems," he said.

He would not name names but he said he knew of more than one operator that planned a UK femtocell rollout this year.

For more on the Femtocell conference see Beware fried kid's brains as mobile operators target the home

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