Femtocells have seemingly gone from cult to mainstream in the space of a year. Despite this, no femtocells have been deployed commercially and considerable hurdles must be overcome before units can be rolled out on a wide-scale basis.

As such, the approach of this report carried out by IDATE, is to present the views of leading experts from the vendor and operator communities, as well as a summary of the activities of all concerned in bringing femtocells to market. It is hoped that this will provide an effective overview of the market as it stands now, albeit one that is necessarily incomplete and a work in progress.

IDATE expects to see the femtocell market developing rapidly over the following years. While a lack of agreed standards and outstanding technical issues will inhibit major rollouts in 2008, network integration issues are likely to be solved by 2009. Coupled with cost reductions this should lead to a ramp up in volumes in 2009/2010. IDATE believes 10 million UMTS femtocells will be shipped in 2010, rising to 18 million in 2011.

Femtocell Timelines

Despite the uncertainty, commercial femtocell roll outs grow ever closer. Following RFQs (Request for Quotes) from major mobile operators, a number of femtocell contract awards are expected to be signed in 2007/2008, with the first major network trials likely to be held in early- 2008. Initial commercial deployments will be made in 2008, though wide-scale commercial roll outs will not take place until 2009. A very significant ramp-up is expected in 2010.

Operators interested in the mass deployment of femtocells include AT&T, Telef┏nica O2 Group, SoftBank, Sprint, TMobile and Vodafone, with more names added to the list on a regular basis. From a vendor perspective, while femtocells were previously largely the preserve of specialist start-up companies such as ip.access, considerable interest is now being shown by most if not all of the major equipment vendors.


Source:cellular-news

Tags:Femtocell | UMTS | AT&T | Sprint | IP