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.

More on Google's interest in Femtocell Technology

...here are more dots to connect:

- FCC revises 700MHz band rules to facilitate "new and innovative wireless broadband services for consumers"....read here.

- Rumours about Google phone, to be available end of 2007.... read here.

- Google wants to redefine the principles of wireless market. Read here about Google's plans to replicate the openness of the broadband environment in the wireless environment. Mobile operators: prepare yourselves to become utility companies!.

Google invests $25 million in Ubiquisys

The recent news of Google's $25 million investment in Ubiquisys is the beggining of a major change in the race to win the Femtocell race.



While architecture, coverage and RF performance are some of the important areas to keep a close eye on, content and applications will be the major differentiating aspects. I talked in a previous post about content personalisation and customisation possibibilities with FemtoCell solutions, which is going to be an exciting area to watch over the next 6 months.

Indoor FemtoCells and content personalisation

One of the tooted selling points of FemtoCells is the enhanced user experience indoors. There is no doubt that in terms of radio coverage the FemtoCell will enable a more uniform and better RF signal indoors.

The story does not end there however. The underlying concept of "convergence" with FemtoCells will give content personalisation and customisation a whole new dimension. In addition to simple signal radiation, a FemtoCell router serving 2-3 mobiles can also perform a whole bunch of other tasks on behalf of users. This is a new uncharted territory with a poetic license to daydream. A variant of social networking can also emerge if it is embraced by the new breed of "converged" operators.

With Google putting effort on mobile content search, the FemtoCell era will be a very exciting and interesting period and one should expect interest in this technology to extend beyond the circle of traditional mobile operators.