WhyDom

Femtocells were all the rage at PulverMedia’s FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) Conference in Chicago last week.     One carrier in the U.S., Sprint, is leading the pack.   As of today, there are no femtocell rollouts in any geography.  There are a few trials, some announced and others not.   Telefonica, as reported in WSJ last week (9/6/2007), is conducting a trial in 50 homes in Madrid.  GigaOm noted that Softbank started a trial in Japan in July 2007.    

At the FMC conference, Dan Jacobson, Senior Portfolio Manager, Converged Voice Services, Sprint Nextel, in “Architecting the Enterprise FMC Solution” noted that Sprint would be making a femtocell announcement toward the end of the year.   In March of this year, Samsung announced at CITA  (PR Newswire) that it would be deploying the Ubicell a CDMA and WCDMA femtocell.   The Sprint is using Samsung’s 1900MHz Ubicell to connect to deliver the cell phone calls from the phone to the femtocell and then over the internet using the customer’s DSL or cable connection.   The Ubicell device will be placed in a home or business and have a range of 5000 square feet  (to cover a home) and will work with all Sprint phones.  Unlike dual-mode WiFi phones, the customer will be able to use their current Sprint cell phone. The Sprint femtocell solution, renamed by Sprint, Airave (a great name I think), solves many of the regulatory issues by limiting usage on the cells to four authorized users only in licensed territories.   By using GPS in the femtocell, Sprint limits usage outside Sprint’s exclusive licensed area.  As pointed out by Engadet this means that customers will not be able to use their femtocell devices in hard to reach locations outside the Sprint licensed territory.  For example, a customer cannot take the femtocell to Vermont and use it at their vacation home where there is no Sprint coverage, nor can the customer take the femtocell to Europe and use it as though the customer is in the U.S.  

Preventing the Sprint customers from using the Ubicell femtocell outside of Sprint’s licensed bandwidth will make regulators and other operators happy but will not solve the problems for Sprint’s customers when they in locations that have no cell service or overseas.   Dual-mode WiFi phones can give customers this ubiquitous coverage outside the licensed territory but the customer will need a phone that works with WiFi.  

Sprint is leading the femtocell rush and has solved many of the regulatory issues.   However, providing enterprise customers with VCC (voice call continuity) inside the while traveling (“mobile”) outside of Sprint’s licensed territory or at enterprise locations outside Sprint’s licensed territory remains elusive.  

T-Mobile’s dual mode WiFi solution has limitations as well.   WSJ’s Walt Mossberg reviewed T-Mobile’s offering last week (9/6/2007) and found that while open, unsecured, WiFi devices and Starbucks T-Mobile WiFI worked, the T-Mobile phones could not be used to log on to other WiFi networks.  Other WiFi networks would include a long list: a secured home WiFi device, municipal WiFI, and the WiFi at the airport.  Sprint’s Director of Signaling and Control Technology Development, Manish Mangal, explained to VON magazine why Sprint is not pursuing the dual mode WiFi solution:  

“We’ve been testing voice over Wi-Fi.  There’s lot of hurdles in implementing it, and no benefits. Problems including the failure of dual-mode devices to catch on in the U.S. We’ve sold dual-mode devices, customers aren’t buying them.”

Solving the femtocell regulatory hurdles and expanding the network within the home using femtocells is a great first step. Sprint has clearly examined the issues and is moving forward.