Operators turn to femtocells to improve enterprise coverage and capacity

LONDON, UK: Infonetics Research recently surveyed operators about their plans to provide enterprise customers with femtocell and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services, such as enterprise femtocells, mobile PBX extension, unified communications, and dual-mode WiFi/cellular services.

The results are published in Infonetics’ Enterprise Femtocell and FMC Services: Global Service Provider Survey, which takes a deep dive into operators’ strategic roadmap for femtocell and FMC services, how they plan to evolve femtocell services into more sophisticated offerings in the future, and how they can integrate FMC for enterprise users.

“Although there was a notable injection of impetus into the market in 2010 and 2011, the enterprise femtocell segment is still very young. At this early stage, most operators are proceeding cautiously, launching enterprise femtocell solutions to improve in-building network coverage (a challenge for mobile operators that can strain relations with high-value enterprise customers), mobile voice call quality, and mobile data capacity. Once the basic needs of capacity and coverage are improved, the opportunity to sell other, more sophisticated FMC services will follow,” expects Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research.

Highlights
* 61 percent of the operators participating in Infonetics’ survey already offer femtocell and FMC services to enterprises, 29% plan to offer the services in 2012, and 10 percent by 2013 (Infonetics interviewed only operators that currently offer femtocell and FMC services or plan to by 2013).

* Femtocells top the list of technologies used to deliver wireless indoor coverage and capacity and show the most growth between now and 2013, followed by microcells/picocells and distributed antenna systems (DAS).

* While operators use multiple solutions to provide wireless indoor coverage and capacity, femtocells are arguably the most cost effective, and improve capacity as well as coverage, which not all alternatives (such as DAS) do.

* The percentage of respondent operators deploying dual-mode 3G/WiFi femtocells jumps from 5 percent in 2011 to 38 percent in 2013.

* Smaller competitive mobile operators are more advanced in the development of their enterprise femtocell service offerings, using the technology to target smaller businesses.