Digital Lifescapes

Improving the quality of indoor voice communication for smartphone users is a high-priority for mobile service providers. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, the femtocell market will see a steady growth as revenues reach $4.2 billion in 2019, owing to a rise in enterprise unit shipments. The vendors focusing on the enterprise market are Alcatel-Lucent, Airvana, and Cisco. Interestingly, while enterprise shipments are on the rise, residential shipments are slowing down. ABI Research predicts slow steady growth at best for residential products for the foreseeable future. With femtocell deployments mainly focusing on coverage, 3G units dominated shipments. However, with global roll-outs of LTE there is a growing demand for multi-mode products, especially in advanced markets such as the United States which is characterized by a CAGR of 130 percent in the next 5 years. Wi-Fi integration continues to advance with major vendors supplying integrated solutions -- eith...

Demand for access to the mobile internet creates opportunities for new wireless technologies. Femtocells are small cellular base stations used to provide wireless connectivity for mobile devices such as smartphones and media tablets. According to the latest market study by Allied Market Research , the global femtocell device market was valued at $220 million in 2012 and is expected to grow at CAGR of 42.9 percent during 2013-2020. A significant increase in the applications of smartphone for and media tablets availing value-added services has fueled the growth of femtocell market. Reductions in cost of electronic devices -- such as mobile phones, laptops -- have increased the demand for femtocells. The growth of femtocell market in developing economies is hampered due to the higher cost. High initial investment required for the setup and the limited usage in home based applications of femtocell does not justify the investment made by consumers in the Asian countries. Flexibili...

As more mobile service providers plan to increase their 4G mobile network coverage, the small-cell phenomenon is gaining momentum. According to the latest market study by Informa Telecoms & Media, an important new milestone has been reached -- the global number of small cells now exceeds the total number of traditional mobile base stations. Their latest market study shows that between October and November 2012, the number of small cells has surpassed 6 million (6,069,224) with macrocells worldwide totaling 5,925,974. Although the bulk of these numbers (over 80 percent) are made up of residential femtocells, which will alone overtake the total number of macrocells early next year, they also include enterprise and public-access small cells. There are now 45 small-cell network deployments -- including nine of the top 10 mobile network operators (ranked by revenue) globally. This milestone was made possible as mature femtocell deployments start to scale and was best illustrated...

Cell-based mobile networks are going through a global metamorphosis -- driven by the emergence of small cell technology deployments. Informa Telecoms & Media issued its latest quarterly small cell market status report, which highlights growing network operator interest in public access small cells as well as progress in the femtocell market. Their report also highlights that small cells will outnumber all macrocells globally during Q4 2012 and that femtocells (aka residential small cells) alone will outnumber all macrocells shortly afterwards in Q1 2013. In the public access market, SK Telecom has successfully started rolling out the world's first LTE small cell deployment while AT&T, Sprint and China Mobile have all committed to rolling out 3G small cell services -- AT&T and Sprint plan to launch later this year. Verizon Wireless also announced its intention to launch LTE public access small cells in the future while Sprint is planning to roll out its first LTE d...

Mobile wireless signal reception issues are more acute when access devices, such as smartphones, are designed to use bandwidth-intensive applications. Adding new macro base stations has been the traditional way of creating new mobile radio capacity for service provider networks. However, cell tower locations are becoming harder to acquire, and the cost of new base stations can be prohibitive. The solution is to utilize distributed antenna systems. DAS represent a versatile indoor/outdoor approach for mobile transport by routing radio frequency (RF) signals through fiber or copper cabling from a single base station to multiple antennas located throughout a building or through antenna nodes. According to the latest market study by In-Stat , the total global revenue from DAS will surpass 13 billion in 2015. "Distributed antenna systems bridge several key areas in cellular coverage," says Chris Kissel, Analyst at In-Stat. "Femto-, pico-, micro-, and macrocells all au...

Femtocells and enterprise femtocells are going to help mobile phone operators provide indoor coverage to their subscribers, while at the same time, relieve network backhaul and infrastructure costs, according to the latest market study by In-Stat . Although all segments of the emerging compact base station market -- which includes indoor and metropolitan picocells as well as microcells -- are expected to show growth, femtocells and enterprise femtocells will have the most significant increase in unit shipments. In-Stat forecasts that annual femtocell shipments will reach 31.8 million by 2014. "Enterprise femtocells may even save businesses money. If PBX features are incorporated into enterprise femtocells, they could displace many wireless PBX and IP PBX installs, as well as the purchase of wireline phones," says Allen Nogee, Principal Analyst at In-Stat. Additionally, In-Stat expects consumer demand for femtocells to be strong, because they allow better in-home cell...