Is There a Femtocell in Your Future?Is There a Femtocell in Your Future?

Femtocells may prove to be the answer by providing better call quality at a lower cost than other wireless alternatives.

No, femtocells aren't a disease or some advanced form of anti-aging treatments, rather femtocells are mini cell towers that have the ability to radically change the way cellular and network worlds are divided.Femtocells work by providing a local connection point for your cell phone (or cell phones depending on access point capabilities). On the back-end, the femtocell connects to a broadband or other network connection, enabling you to backhaul your cellular calls over an Internet connection. Femtocells benefit users in two ways--the first is by enabling access to cell networks from anyplace there is an Internet connection--no more weak signals when indoors for example. The second benefit is potential to reduce fees by eliminating per-minute costs for calls carried over the femtocell.

Femtocell products are finally going mainstream, with Verizon Wireless's "Network Extender" hitting the market this week to join Sprint's Airave, introduced last year.

While Sprint & Verizon Wireless are focused on the residential market, we can expect to see femtocell technologies rapidly enter the enterprise landscape to offer organizations the ability to reduce cellular costs, and improve cellular coverage by taking calls off of public towers and onto building or campus-wide femtocell access points. This will give IT managers a new alternative for supporting wireless voice services, an option that may prove to be cost effective versus building out wireless LANs and dual-mode phones, or using DECT-based phones that operate independently from a user's cell phone.

In our research we've seen a strong desire among enterprise IT architects to gain control of mobile phone bills while also meeting end-user desire to increasingly rely on the cell phone as the primary means of communication, especially as new devices such as the BlackBerry Storm and Apple iPhone proliferate into the workplace. Femtocells may prove to be the answer by providing better call quality at a lower cost than other wireless alternatives.Femtocells may prove to be the answer by providing better call quality at a lower cost than other wireless alternatives.