Femtocells: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Technology

Foreword

Inside Out

In many countries there are more (mobile) phones than people – it would be very easy to suggest that this means ‘job done’ or ‘mission accomplished’. The reality is that there remain many opportunities and usage scenarios still to be reached by the evolution of mobile telephony in a digital broadband world. This is particularly the case when it comes to the twin requirements of in-building coverage and data services – the very heart of this text on femtocells edited and written by Simon Saunders and his colleagues.

Mobile was originally designed for mobility and particularly for outdoor coverage. The GSM and 3G digital standards were also designed for evolution, or natural selection as Darwin may have put it. The operator viewpoint has always been to maximise the shared R&D across many international markets in order to minimise costs and support the widest range of services and applications. The final frontier has always been seen as data and applications. However, without generous wireless spectrum and strong radio engineering these aspirations are not fully realised or implemented.

Typically the planning for domestic or in-building coverage has also been generally lower priority in the last 25 years of mobile communications. This relates both to spectrum available to operators, relative costs of in-building wireless solutions, and also to the availability of telecommunications alternatives. In the developed world, wireline communications have generally led ...