The buzz around femtocells is getting louder. Apart from (potentially) solving the indoor coverage problem and bringing mobile 3G into the home, they have an even more winning advantage for operators, as Will Franks, founder of femtocell vendor Ubiquisys, points out. He estimates that they help operators save "around 40 per cent of their overall cost from their backhaul and power to their base stations, by using broadband and a consumer's electricity," he says. "Although," he adds, "a consumer's obviously going to have to benefit out of this otherwise they're not going to be able to do it."

So how do you market femtocells? One possible approach is that when a customer's contract is coming to an end they could be offered an extension upsell on their bundle. For example, by paying slightly more each month they could get a home package added to their existing mobile package. This might also include thousands of minutes thrown in or free data; it simply depends on how the operator wants to structure the bundle.

Or you could just buy a femtocell and plug it into a broadband connection: the parasitic play, as Franks calls it. "I could get a Vodafone femtocell and I could plug it into whatever broadband I have," he says. There is, inevitably, a downside. "At some point I may have problems because I haven't got a quality of service guarantee on the broadband," Franks points out. The answer is in the hands of the operators, it seems. "If the operators want to guarantee a level of service rather than the best effort, then they could do that by having a relationship with the ISPs," he says.

Thus a customer could go into an operator's shop and decide to sign up for a bundled package. The operator would ask for the name of the customer's DSL provider and then, through its relationship with that provider, guarantee the quality of service that customer needs to have the femtocell running on their network. It helps, of course, if the operator actually has such a relationship - although that is becoming more likely by the week. "Those types of discussions between ISPs and mobile operators have definitely been going on," says Franks.

Let's say you've abandoned plans to plug in without QoS. You're still connecting via broadband, however. Can your use of 3G data be monitored and charged?

"It depends how the operator decides to do it," says Franks. "It can all go back via their GGSN to their core network, and they can go through it and charge however they want to with the data." There are other options, of course, but they may all be irrelevant - for one very good reason. "Ultimately I expect a lot of operators to be doing flat rate data at home," Franks says. "If I'm already paying for the data on my broadband connection, I'm not going to be very happy if I have a cap on data on my mobile at home."

But, you may ask, how does the charging model work beyond the home? Surely users will find their bills shooting up suddenly when they leave the femtocell area? Perhaps, but they will already be aware of the higher rate because the icon on their screen telling them they are at home will disappear. In any case, Franks feels it won't be that much of a surprise. "Consumers are very aware that if they're out on their macro networks, if they start doing lots of data things, they get large bills. So you're not doing anything they're not familiar with; you're just giving them something more in their home environment."

And maybe slightly accelerating 3G usage out of doors? Possibly, Franks agrees, but again billing will need to play a part. "The other thing which is in inevitable in my view is flat rate data packages for out-of-doors use," he says. "They may be capped but there will be flat rate, I'm sure. It's inevitable. It's the only way you can really get data to take off."

Which is why, he says, even though he is referring to his company's core product: "In some ways the femtocell - the box itself - is almost irrelevant. The success or failure of this right now to quite an extent is down to how the mobile operators construct their packages."

To comment on any articles, please contact us at chatback@telecoms.com or have your say on our blog.

Bookmark this page

• Back to Top
• Print