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NewsGlobe: Currents
Fall VON: Femtocells are better deal for mobile providers
Wireline carriers have more to lose, less incentive for implementing devices
by Jim Barthold
The value of femtocells in providing improved wireless
connectivity in residences and small businesses depends on
which flavor of communications service is being offered to the
end user. Wireless carriers have a lot to gain in improved
signal quality, reduced capex costs for cell towers and the
chance to grow subscriber numbers while handing off heavy
bandwidth loads to wireline backhaul via cable and DSL
modems. Wireline carriers, on the other hand, risk seeing
their networks used as backhaul for competitors and
becoming data bit pipes for service providers such as Google
riding into the home on wireless waves and bypassing their
circuitry.
Those were two scenarios presented during a pre-show VON
conference, “Femtocells: The Bridge from FMC to FMS for
Consumer and Network Operator Technology and
Deployment.”
Technologically speaking, femtocells, by acting as powerful in-
building multi-channel access point base stations can “close
the gap between what a consumer has come to expect with
traditional wireline and the experience they get with a mobile
network,” said Michael Blanchard, senior product manager of
femtocell products for Airvana.
Blanchard, an admitted femtocell advocate for its wireless
advantages, said he believed that the technology will be
driven by “many consumers (who) have a preference for
mobile services and mobile devices” because femtocells allow
end users to keep the same carrier-provided mobile device
yet tap the underlying fixed broadband network within a
residence.
The network structure, with femtocells providing two-way
communications between mobile voice and data networks and
the fixed wireline network backhauling the traffic to the
internet would allow mobile operators to “offer innovative
billing plans” that compete with existing wireline broadband
plans and “gain a foothold in the digital living room,” he
continued. “Virtually all major mobile service providers across
the globe have expressed interest.”
That’s because femtocells work in the best interest of mobile
providers and are not especially hurtful to vertically integrated
companies like AT&T and Verizon which have both wireline
and wireless services. Femtocells, however, have a darker
side for non-wireless carriers such as cable operators, which
somewhat tempers the move from fixed-mobile convergence
(FMC) to fixed-mobile substitution (FMS), Blanchard admitted.
The initial focus, he said, “is still on enhancing that mobile
experience” in an FMC experience “for all the users that are
attached to that femtocell.”
The other part of the equation, when the consumer
begins “critically examining their fixed line bill,” as Blanchard
put it, will be a little trickier to pull off, no matter how well the
technology works.
That’s because the true worth of a femtocell will be
to “reduce the fixed line operator to a bit pipe carrier,” said
Scott Poretsky, director of carrier network engineering at
ReefPoint.
And frankly, that’s unlikely to happen. Legal battles are
already shaping up as to whether the mobile carriers can force
the wireline carriers to backhaul their traffic from femtocells.
Even if they win, however, there’s no guarantee that those
carriers will deliver adequate quality of service to make the
experience worthwhile for the end user.
“It’s very important for end-to-end QoS that there be
agreement between the mobile and fixed operator,” Poretsky
said.
Without it, it won’t matter if the femtocell is handling IMS-
enabled multimedia voice and data or just serving as an
improved home network device. Technologically it will work, but
on the important backhaul aspect, it will fail.
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