What is a femtocell? David Chambers from Amdocs, our session moderator, gives the overview: It is basically a "complete [cellular] base station, shrunk to size."
Chambers says North America is a ripe femto market, since it has poor cellular coverage, good wired broadband, and people with money to spend. Theoretically :-)
David Nowicki, VP of marketing and product management from femto manufacturer Airvana, now speaking. Talking about the femto forum -- industry group promoting femto standards.
Femto Forum -- 43 operators, covering 1.3 billion subscribers; 17 of the top 20 mobile operators playing together.
What does the consumer get out of installing a femto? David says there's an 80-page white paper on the forum web site, woof! We'll read that later. Talking now about a family adding a femto to their house... it costs the operator at least $400 up front to integrate the device in -- but over the life of the customer contract it is worth it because ARPU goes way up. Could double the ARPU.
The family uses more data -- adds big-bucket calling plans -- more services, like TV -- so femtos can be a way to bring more bundles into a subscriber contract. Plus it offloads some data from the service provider network -- more savings.
Who will want femtos? Two-thirds (according to analysis) of customers are wireline customers who want mobility as a complementary service. Makes sense since you need a wired connection (ed. note -- or something like Clearwire's WiMAX) to connect the femto.
Now speaking: Don Troshynski, technical director at Acme Packet, going to talk about back end stuff.
Tags: 3G, 4G, 4GWE, Cellular Service Providers, femto forum, Femtocells, Paul Kapustka, Sidecut Reports
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