I see that the debate between Femtocells and WiFi in the home rages on (http://gigaom.com/2009/11/02/who-needs-femtocells-if-we-have-wi-fi/) The basic argument against Femto's is that they are just offloading traffic from the carriers network and WiFi can do this just as easily. To me, this is more than just offloading networks or having a better solution for voice than WiFi, this is about owning the gateway in the home. As homes become wireless hubs for everything from energy monitoring/control to remote healthcare, there will be an enourmous opportunity to aggregate all of this wireless traffic inlcuding the normal voice/data traffic. M2M traffic could become more prevalent than person-to-person traffic in the home over the next 5 years. Some of this traffic will lend itself to 4G networks moreso than WiFi, especially for remote objects that aren't on local sensor nets (like Zigbee).
The other unque opportunity for Femtocells is the fill the gap in the "continuum" between the home-car-office. Today, this is not well addressed by WiFi or even celular networks for that matter. Given femtocells can have an extended range well outside the home, this could create gap coverage (like accessing your media server from your car as your car is parked in the driveway or routing your health data to your trainer as your jogging through the neighborhood). Wifi cannot address this.
Having said this, I still think the carriers should subsidize the fentocells giving the fact it allows them to address the 25% of homes that do not have a fixed line phone today and also offload their networks, More importantly, it gives them a gateway into the home. I would love to see a 4G/WiFi gateway (which is available) offered by US carriers as a way to provide the best of both worlds.
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Having said this, I still think the carriers should subsidize the fentocells giving the fact
wrong spelling with the word Fento cells-please note
Lai from
Hong Kong China