7 Aug 2007

Three areas unexploited enough by Femtocell marketing efforts

The three points talked about in every Femtocell customer meeting:
1 - Price and potential savings
2 - The indoor coverage advantage
3 - Architecture and how to integrate with existing network infrastructure

The Femtocell marketing effort can benefit from addressing three other areas:
1- Targeting new breed of customers: Most of the effort is spent towards soliciting the traditional operators (VF, FT/Orange, T-Mobile ...etc), all of which either already have mature networks or in the process of building them. One of the important selling points of the Femtocell concept is that the network can be operational from the day the first router is shipped. There is no time wasted acquiring sites and building them....etc. Therefore the prospects for new entrants are great and therefore targeting these new market entrants instead of traditional operators is a good strategy. These new entrants will have a discernibly different business model from the traditional mobile operator model.
2- High rise buildings and vertical cities: I don't know why everybody assumes that Femtocells are ideal for the typical US and European suburbia. Most people around the world live in flats in high rise buildings, tower blocks and apartments. I'd like to see the Femtocell concept pitched for this type of deployment. The benefit over typical macro deployment is easily recognisable.
3- Community Networking: I've talked about this in a previous post. This is essentially copying the FON model of community based networking. This also requires the emergence of a new breed of operators who are ready to experiment with new business models instead of the traditional linking of minutes and ARPU.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To operate a Femto Cell you still would have to own spectrum at least in Europe. That limits the entry of new operators.