The bill proposes installation of femtocells and WiFi hotspots in about 9,000 buildings owned and operated by the US GSA, and to be mandatory in any future federal structures.
The bill also asks for a $15 million budget for the performance of retrofitting and future installs.
Click for details here
The influence of industries and businesses over governance bodies is not new to the US. If this bill goes through it will give a push to the often thought "disruptive" femtocell technology.
Showing posts with label WiFi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WiFi. Show all posts
10 Mar 2011
20 Jun 2007
Femtocell Challenges
In a previous post I talked about the potential benefits of femtocells to the operators as well as consumers. In this post I'd like to investigate the potential hurdles in the road to viable femtocell solutions.
Looking at various analysts remarks I narrowed the list of potential show stoppers to the following items, all of which are not unresolvable, but one has to be aware of:
Cost:
This is the obvious one. There is no doubt that we are well into the cost reduction era. This is by far the number one item on every operator's agenda. The bottom line is that operators want to see a nice dollar savings associated with Femto cells, which increases pressure on femto cell development firms to reduce their price tag. Traditionally, pricing is based on a BOM plus margins. An alternative way for development firms is to price based on potential benefits/savings. My firm has recently been engaged in a similar pricing activity with a potential investor.
The cost challange means that there is a limit to the amount of effort and features developers will bundle in the femto cell box. Deciding what is "sufficient" feature list is a difficult call (check the technology life cycle model proposed by D. Normann in one of my previous posts)
Radio Planning and interference management:
Unlike Wi Fi, the Femto cell is likely to use the licensed spectrum e.g. UMTS band. Although it is my view that the femto network is better have its own carrier, many clients would like the femto cell concept to work on the same carrier frequency used by existing infrastructure be it a macro, micro or pico layer.
Femtocells are expected to coexist with the rest of the network by automatically configuring themselves. Operator or user intervention is undesirable...a femto cell box has to be fully plug and play without the need to setup,configure or optimise it in anyway. Therefore lots of effort is being spent on femto cell radio management features e.g. choosing the right carrier, automatic setting of power levels, protecting other infrastructure from harmful interference, handoff ...etc .
Core Network Integration:
I touched upon this in a previous post (Femtocell Architecture).
In a nutshell, a legacy architecture is too old fashioned, while on the other hand a full flat IP architecture with an IMS core is an expensive undertaking with no sign of becoming available soon.
Interim solutions relying on some kind of concentrator seem to attract some attention. I can't really comment much on this and I'll leave it to the core experts to make their minds.
With converged solutions such as femto cells there is also an increased expectation of a higher level of network intelligence and features at the edges of the network (as opposed to the traditional model of core intelligence).
End user perception:
The consumer will (and has to) ask: "what's in it for me". At the moment most of the promises revolve around cheaper calls as well as using the often over hyped word: "convergence". The fact is that most people do not know what this word means! The operators will find it challenging to convince the consumer that the femtocell is the way to go.
In addition, there is the issue of backward compatibility in terms of usage. Many people have Internet access at home and a big proportion use WiFi routers to have wireless coverage at home. Is the Femtocell going to replace that? if so, then there is a need to have a combined WiFi/Femto router to enable legacy equipment to access the Internet. Alternatively people will end up with a stack of routers, from different suppliers.... hardly a convergent solution!.
Therefore the extent of device convergence will play a significant role in any operator's femtocell strategy.
There are also health concerns about exposure to increased levels of RF waves.
Looking at various analysts remarks I narrowed the list of potential show stoppers to the following items, all of which are not unresolvable, but one has to be aware of:
Cost:
This is the obvious one. There is no doubt that we are well into the cost reduction era. This is by far the number one item on every operator's agenda. The bottom line is that operators want to see a nice dollar savings associated with Femto cells, which increases pressure on femto cell development firms to reduce their price tag. Traditionally, pricing is based on a BOM plus margins. An alternative way for development firms is to price based on potential benefits/savings. My firm has recently been engaged in a similar pricing activity with a potential investor.
The cost challange means that there is a limit to the amount of effort and features developers will bundle in the femto cell box. Deciding what is "sufficient" feature list is a difficult call (check the technology life cycle model proposed by D. Normann in one of my previous posts)
Radio Planning and interference management:
Unlike Wi Fi, the Femto cell is likely to use the licensed spectrum e.g. UMTS band. Although it is my view that the femto network is better have its own carrier, many clients would like the femto cell concept to work on the same carrier frequency used by existing infrastructure be it a macro, micro or pico layer.
Femtocells are expected to coexist with the rest of the network by automatically configuring themselves. Operator or user intervention is undesirable...a femto cell box has to be fully plug and play without the need to setup,configure or optimise it in anyway. Therefore lots of effort is being spent on femto cell radio management features e.g. choosing the right carrier, automatic setting of power levels, protecting other infrastructure from harmful interference, handoff ...etc .
Core Network Integration:
I touched upon this in a previous post (Femtocell Architecture).
In a nutshell, a legacy architecture is too old fashioned, while on the other hand a full flat IP architecture with an IMS core is an expensive undertaking with no sign of becoming available soon.
Interim solutions relying on some kind of concentrator seem to attract some attention. I can't really comment much on this and I'll leave it to the core experts to make their minds.
With converged solutions such as femto cells there is also an increased expectation of a higher level of network intelligence and features at the edges of the network (as opposed to the traditional model of core intelligence).
End user perception:
The consumer will (and has to) ask: "what's in it for me". At the moment most of the promises revolve around cheaper calls as well as using the often over hyped word: "convergence". The fact is that most people do not know what this word means! The operators will find it challenging to convince the consumer that the femtocell is the way to go.
In addition, there is the issue of backward compatibility in terms of usage. Many people have Internet access at home and a big proportion use WiFi routers to have wireless coverage at home. Is the Femtocell going to replace that? if so, then there is a need to have a combined WiFi/Femto router to enable legacy equipment to access the Internet. Alternatively people will end up with a stack of routers, from different suppliers.... hardly a convergent solution!.
Therefore the extent of device convergence will play a significant role in any operator's femtocell strategy.
There are also health concerns about exposure to increased levels of RF waves.
13 Jun 2007
Femto cell Architecture
The business case for indoor femto cells has gained increasing traction in the last few weeks, and lots of news comments about various femto cell development companies. For example, check here, here and here.
Although the femto cell concept is quickly gaining grounds towards complete and operational products, there is still some misunderstanding on how the overall network architecture will look like. I'll try to address this issue in this post.
A femto cell router is a small device, the size of any Wi-Fi router, which is in effect a miniature base station. The radio is a standard based radio such as UMTS/HSPA which the operator will likely require a license to operate on. The router connects to a DSL line. The idea is to enable the subscriber to make and receive mobile calls indoors, with low signal levels which has a number of benefits to the operator:
- Hopefully accelerate fixed line substitution.
- Reduce the cost of building a full macro layer network.
- Lock subscriber in to the operator and reduce the likelihood of churn.
- Provide a viable medium for content distribution (the ugly walled garden paradigm)
It is not my intention here to argue for or against these benefits. I will dedicate a full post on the business case for the femto cell and the potential cons sometime soon. So let us stay on the technology side and try to investigate how a UMTS based femto cell routers will be integrated with the operator's core network.
Basically, there are a number of ways, the first of which is the conventional hierarchy using an RNC . Just like any node-b is connected back to an RNC which is then in turn is connected to the core network, the femtocell routers can be treated like individual node-bs and connect to RNCs. This may appeal to big manufacturers who already have substantial deployments and many RNC on the ground. The downside to this approach is the limited chances of inter-operable devices if the operators chooses to diversify their suppliers. Although the Iub interface (base station to RNC) is standardised, the reality is most implementations are proprietary. Typically operators don't like to put all their eggs in one basket and would prefer to get solutions from various suppliers. The other downside of this approach is that most available RNC solutions are geared towards Macro/Micro type of deployments. In other words they are built in order to support relatively small number of cells with a huge number of subscribers in each cell. They don't scale very well to support Femto cell deployments with almost as many cells as there are subscribers, and a handful of subscribers per cell.
An alternative approach is to use UMA (or now called GAN). UMA was originally conceived to support dual mode cellular/WiFi-over-Internet type of connectivity. When the mobile is detected indoors within the range of pre-determined WiFi coverage, a UMA concentrator does the core network negotiation on behalf of the mobile, e.g. registering, and updating location ... etc. It is thought that a similar procedure can be used for femto cells. When the mobile is detected within the coverage of a femto cell, UMA kind of hand shaking takes place to ensure that: 1. the mobile is allowed to access the network at this particular femto cell, 2. the traffic between the mobile and the core network is forwarded accordingly. Using this method a UMA concentrator is required, so in a way, the solution is still hierarchical and it is certainly one of the criticisms of this method is that it is not a fully flat architecture. Kineto is one of the companies promoting this approach.
Yet another alternative approach is enabling femto cell connectivity through an IMS service. In this approach, the femto cell router talks SIP over the internet back to an IMS service which acts as a bridge between the femto layer and the rest of the network. Although this is considered the "flattest" approach, it is yet to understand how it will work in practice, the delay in working fully featured IMS platforms is one of the concerns of femto cell development companies.
Incidentally, my current clients are hedging their bets by supporting more than one approach and have developed partnerships with various companies in their respective fields to make the Femto architecture as flexible as possible.
Although the femto cell concept is quickly gaining grounds towards complete and operational products, there is still some misunderstanding on how the overall network architecture will look like. I'll try to address this issue in this post.
A femto cell router is a small device, the size of any Wi-Fi router, which is in effect a miniature base station. The radio is a standard based radio such as UMTS/HSPA which the operator will likely require a license to operate on. The router connects to a DSL line. The idea is to enable the subscriber to make and receive mobile calls indoors, with low signal levels which has a number of benefits to the operator:
- Hopefully accelerate fixed line substitution.
- Reduce the cost of building a full macro layer network.
- Lock subscriber in to the operator and reduce the likelihood of churn.
- Provide a viable medium for content distribution (the ugly walled garden paradigm)
It is not my intention here to argue for or against these benefits. I will dedicate a full post on the business case for the femto cell and the potential cons sometime soon. So let us stay on the technology side and try to investigate how a UMTS based femto cell routers will be integrated with the operator's core network.
Basically, there are a number of ways, the first of which is the conventional hierarchy using an RNC . Just like any node-b is connected back to an RNC which is then in turn is connected to the core network, the femtocell routers can be treated like individual node-bs and connect to RNCs. This may appeal to big manufacturers who already have substantial deployments and many RNC on the ground. The downside to this approach is the limited chances of inter-operable devices if the operators chooses to diversify their suppliers. Although the Iub interface (base station to RNC) is standardised, the reality is most implementations are proprietary. Typically operators don't like to put all their eggs in one basket and would prefer to get solutions from various suppliers. The other downside of this approach is that most available RNC solutions are geared towards Macro/Micro type of deployments. In other words they are built in order to support relatively small number of cells with a huge number of subscribers in each cell. They don't scale very well to support Femto cell deployments with almost as many cells as there are subscribers, and a handful of subscribers per cell.
An alternative approach is to use UMA (or now called GAN). UMA was originally conceived to support dual mode cellular/WiFi-over-Internet type of connectivity. When the mobile is detected indoors within the range of pre-determined WiFi coverage, a UMA concentrator does the core network negotiation on behalf of the mobile, e.g. registering, and updating location ... etc. It is thought that a similar procedure can be used for femto cells. When the mobile is detected within the coverage of a femto cell, UMA kind of hand shaking takes place to ensure that: 1. the mobile is allowed to access the network at this particular femto cell, 2. the traffic between the mobile and the core network is forwarded accordingly. Using this method a UMA concentrator is required, so in a way, the solution is still hierarchical and it is certainly one of the criticisms of this method is that it is not a fully flat architecture. Kineto is one of the companies promoting this approach.
Yet another alternative approach is enabling femto cell connectivity through an IMS service. In this approach, the femto cell router talks SIP over the internet back to an IMS service which acts as a bridge between the femto layer and the rest of the network. Although this is considered the "flattest" approach, it is yet to understand how it will work in practice, the delay in working fully featured IMS platforms is one of the concerns of femto cell development companies.
Incidentally, my current clients are hedging their bets by supporting more than one approach and have developed partnerships with various companies in their respective fields to make the Femto architecture as flexible as possible.
14 Feb 2007
The advent of Femto cells - cont'd
Both Epen and Martin made valuable comments on my last posting, so I thought that expanding some of the ideas is in place.
From the consumer point of view, reduced call prices are definitely an important aspect of Femto cells. As for the interference aspect, whether Femto cells will cause more or less interference to Macro cells is debatable. On one hand the signal will be contained within indoors. On the other hand it is likely there will be so many of them. Also, there has to be a reasonable signal penetration into (or out of) buildings to facilitate handover between the two layers.
Will DSL providers get a piece of the pie? It depends who the DSL provider is. As Martin suggested, there are many operators buying DSL assets and are thinking of service "convergence" on the long run. If you are a mere DSL provider, your business model is unlikely to be affected much with Femto cells. Somebody is paying for the DSL subscription (could be the consumer, but could be the operator too), and that's all that matters. If you are someone competing with mobile operators (e.g. BT), then it is likely they will put any hurdle they can think of in the way of Femto cells, unless they make some money out of it.
Femto cells will definitely face fierce competition. If mobile operators loose the battle, at least they can claim that they tried, instead of sitting back and watching the market slip away. They may well loose, but they will loose more by not trying.
There are many handsets with WiFi capabilities around. Whether someone would want to use Skype and ditch the conventional mobile network is a matter of personal preference. For the time being, only technology suave people with love of experimentation do this.
There are also many hurdles that internet based VoIP (e.g. Skype) has to pass before it is adopted on a full scale for mobility. For example, seamless call transfer between the home cell and Macro layer can not happen if you use a simple VoIP routed over the internet: the mobile operator has to be involved somehow. This makes the Femto solution more appealing, because the call is managed easily and seamlessly.
It is not perceived that wireless calls over WiFi will pick up on a large scale, simply because powerful operators (who by the way spent billions on spectrum) will not allow it to happen. So the issue of mobility support is intertwined with the spectrum license and the regulatory aspects associated with it. For example it is not permitted to support mobility on a system using the fixed wireless broadband spectrum in UK.
All in all, here is a summary of all the factors that will influence the Femto cell strategies going forward:
Indeed... only time will tell.
From the consumer point of view, reduced call prices are definitely an important aspect of Femto cells. As for the interference aspect, whether Femto cells will cause more or less interference to Macro cells is debatable. On one hand the signal will be contained within indoors. On the other hand it is likely there will be so many of them. Also, there has to be a reasonable signal penetration into (or out of) buildings to facilitate handover between the two layers.
Will DSL providers get a piece of the pie? It depends who the DSL provider is. As Martin suggested, there are many operators buying DSL assets and are thinking of service "convergence" on the long run. If you are a mere DSL provider, your business model is unlikely to be affected much with Femto cells. Somebody is paying for the DSL subscription (could be the consumer, but could be the operator too), and that's all that matters. If you are someone competing with mobile operators (e.g. BT), then it is likely they will put any hurdle they can think of in the way of Femto cells, unless they make some money out of it.
Femto cells will definitely face fierce competition. If mobile operators loose the battle, at least they can claim that they tried, instead of sitting back and watching the market slip away. They may well loose, but they will loose more by not trying.
There are many handsets with WiFi capabilities around. Whether someone would want to use Skype and ditch the conventional mobile network is a matter of personal preference. For the time being, only technology suave people with love of experimentation do this.
There are also many hurdles that internet based VoIP (e.g. Skype) has to pass before it is adopted on a full scale for mobility. For example, seamless call transfer between the home cell and Macro layer can not happen if you use a simple VoIP routed over the internet: the mobile operator has to be involved somehow. This makes the Femto solution more appealing, because the call is managed easily and seamlessly.
It is not perceived that wireless calls over WiFi will pick up on a large scale, simply because powerful operators (who by the way spent billions on spectrum) will not allow it to happen. So the issue of mobility support is intertwined with the spectrum license and the regulatory aspects associated with it. For example it is not permitted to support mobility on a system using the fixed wireless broadband spectrum in UK.
All in all, here is a summary of all the factors that will influence the Femto cell strategies going forward:
- License: Is it needed, who owns it and what does it cover? What spectrum?
- Mobility: Will seamless communication (handover,routing of incoming and outgoing calls) be part of any competing solutions?
- Content: who has control of it, and how much will it cost to access it?
- Backhaul: who controls DSL backhaul?
- Regulatory: how will the spectrum be allocated and what are the conditions attached to it by the regulatory bodies?
- HW costs: What volumes? Economies of scale? Cost in handset or router?
Indeed... only time will tell.
9 Feb 2007
The advent of Femto Cells
Home base station solutions, also called Femto cells have recently attracted a lot of attention. The idea is to give the mobile user a small box similar to wireless routers, which provides mobile cellular coverage at home. But why would mobile operators want to do that?
In order to answer this question, one has to look at what mobile operators are competing against. Fixed line carriers and DSL service providers are seriously threatening the mobile business by offering new products centered around Fixed Mobile Convergence, which in essence utilises wireless access technology to capture mobile users when at home, and divert their mobile originated voice and data calls to the fixed line network.
Mobile operators found themselves in a predicament: the traditional Macro cellular networks are not able to compete with what DSL service providers can offer, neither from a cost structure point of view, nor in terms of access speeds. (of course the mobile operators are partly to blame because they picked the wrong battle by trying to compete on the basis of access speeds rather than mobile centric applications).
A home base station or femto cell can help mobile operators in many ways. First they can compete directly with other home access solutions which rely on other types of access technology such as WiFi or WiMax. This is because low cost mobile handsets are widely available, whereas dual mode handsets with WiFi capabilities are pricey and still limited in variety.
The femto cell will also enable the operator to cater for subscribers where the service is most needed. Compare this with traditional macro deployment where the infrastructure is first built in places where subscribers are "likely" to appear and even before subscribers start using the network. A femto cell also circumvents the issue of outdoor-to-indoor propagation which typically kills the capacity of 3G and 3.5G systems.
The deployment costs associated with a femto cell are marginal in comparison with Macro cell deployment. This is because the customer is providing the "real estate" to keep the box, the power, as well as the backhaul (e.g. DSL subscription). I don't assume here that Femto cells will replace the macro layer, nevertheless the extent of investment in the macro layer will be considerably less.
Femto cells will also enable the operator to offer creative and disruptive tariffs to directly compete with fixed line. Home zone offers can also be more effective than traditional home zone offers using macro cells which extend for kilometers sometimes (because they rely on a cell ID parameter).
So where is the catch? I will discuss the downside in a future post.
In order to answer this question, one has to look at what mobile operators are competing against. Fixed line carriers and DSL service providers are seriously threatening the mobile business by offering new products centered around Fixed Mobile Convergence, which in essence utilises wireless access technology to capture mobile users when at home, and divert their mobile originated voice and data calls to the fixed line network.
Mobile operators found themselves in a predicament: the traditional Macro cellular networks are not able to compete with what DSL service providers can offer, neither from a cost structure point of view, nor in terms of access speeds. (of course the mobile operators are partly to blame because they picked the wrong battle by trying to compete on the basis of access speeds rather than mobile centric applications).
A home base station or femto cell can help mobile operators in many ways. First they can compete directly with other home access solutions which rely on other types of access technology such as WiFi or WiMax. This is because low cost mobile handsets are widely available, whereas dual mode handsets with WiFi capabilities are pricey and still limited in variety.
The femto cell will also enable the operator to cater for subscribers where the service is most needed. Compare this with traditional macro deployment where the infrastructure is first built in places where subscribers are "likely" to appear and even before subscribers start using the network. A femto cell also circumvents the issue of outdoor-to-indoor propagation which typically kills the capacity of 3G and 3.5G systems.
The deployment costs associated with a femto cell are marginal in comparison with Macro cell deployment. This is because the customer is providing the "real estate" to keep the box, the power, as well as the backhaul (e.g. DSL subscription). I don't assume here that Femto cells will replace the macro layer, nevertheless the extent of investment in the macro layer will be considerably less.
Femto cells will also enable the operator to offer creative and disruptive tariffs to directly compete with fixed line. Home zone offers can also be more effective than traditional home zone offers using macro cells which extend for kilometers sometimes (because they rely on a cell ID parameter).
So where is the catch? I will discuss the downside in a future post.
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