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3g Femtocells; the Awful Secret of 3G explained by ip.access

If a 3G phone femtocell is a small picocell, then what's a big femtocell? Apparently, it's  a super-femtocell - a picocell with femtocell attributes. Yes, on the face of it, rather confusing.

The problem with a genuine picocell, reports Dr. Andy Tiller, VP Marketing, ip.access, is that it's out of date. "A new generation of 3G picocells builds on today’s 3G femtocell technology. These picocells have higher capacity and range than femtocells, but they are based on low-cost femtocell technology platforms," Tiller says in a new corporate White Paper.

Tiller's expertise was backed up this month, by an assessment by ABI Research, which rated ip.access the number one picocell vendor.

If the leading picocell supplier is now selling a different technology, then it's worth asking why.

"This new femtocell technology for picocell users, means they can take advantage of auto-configuration techniques which have been developed for femtocells, to enable self-installation by the end customer," asserts Tiller. "They also share a common network architecture with femtocells, and will use the new Iu-h standard8 for core network integration,"

he explains in the document. Iu-h is the 3GPP standard for Home Node B (femtocell) integration with the core network.

Who needs a super-femtocell? Most business premises, apparently. The problem, as Tiller explains - as tactfully as possible - is the problem 3G cannot admit: it doesn't work as well as 2G cellular, or GSM. Or, as he rather more diplomatically phrases it:

As enterprises turn to 3G for mobile voice and data services, operators will face a significant challenge: getting enough coverage and capacity into office buildings. As these workers get accustomed to 3G performance on their travels, they will expect and demand the same performance inside their offices.

They won't get it, said Tiller, dropping the tactful Mr Diplomat pose, and coming right out with it.

"Unfortunately, that’s a challenge for today’s 3G networks. The walls and windows of office buildings absorb most of the radio energy transmitted by the outdoor network. The energy that does make it through to the user is typically as little as a fortieth of the outside power (and often much less). This results in customer dissatisfaction with patchy voice coverage, and especially with poor data performance (because high-speed data requires a very good quality signal)."

Mobile operators are vulnerable to losing business customers in places where their in-building coverage is poor – for example, Tiller reveals: "T-Mobile has found this is the top reason its customers switch to rival networks."

And, to make matters worse, since all users in a 3G cell share the available base station transmit power, a few indoor users consuming data services can significantly reduce the capacity of the entire cell and compromise service quality for outdoor users as well.

The full story is available in an Acrobat PDF format from IP Access, or ip.access as it prefers to spell it, from the company web site.