Status report says femtocells are now being deployed in volume

A recent report has revealed that femtocells are now being deployed in volume. Femtocells are small base stations that are meant to be installed in homes or offices. They extend service coverage of 3G mobile reception by connecting to the provider’s network.

Vodafone is one of the firms that has been known to use femtocell units in order to boost rural 3G. The firm had made the announcement to do so, aside from saying that they were looking for towns to test out the technology.

“Mobile connectivity plays a vital role in keeping communities in touch and helping to support rural economies,” Vodafone said in a statement. “The economics of getting mobile coverage into rural areas by traditional methods, however, can mean that some communities have less opportunity than others to take part in the growing smartphone revolution.”

Now a study by Informa Telecoms & Media has revealed that femtocell deployment is on the rise. The markets of firms deploying these units is also extending to more than just households. The study revealed that the latest operator to employ femtocells include Mosaic Telecom in the United States, and Telecom Italia.

The study also states that there are currently 37 commercial deployments all over the world. Telefonica O2 has also revealed details on the pre-launching of their “Boostbox” femtocell service in the UK that will be made available to both enterprises and consumers.

Dimitris Mavrakis, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, stated: “In the past some people feared that provisioning or cell planning would limit the scale of femtocell deployments. It is now clear that deployments are routinely reaching volume with multiple operators surpassing 100,000 deployed units, and moving towards the millions. In fact, the total number of Sprint femtocells is close to double the total number of conventional US cell towers.”

He added: “These deployments also continue to extend beyond the home with two CDMA operators – Verizon and Sprint – both launching enterprise offerings, while Vodafone has started to look at rural femtocells in public spaces. With the 3G small cell market growing strongly, operators are now commiting in ever greater numbers to LTE small cells which will be deployed increasingly in 2012.”

Source – Fierce Wireless