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Sorting through the vast amounts of trees sacrificed for the hype on femto cells, here is my conclusion: Femto is an interesting technology (but not novel), rife with operational issues and founded on a shaky business proposition. For the most part it is a solution looking for a problem, assuming you can even agree on the definition of the solution. For this article, femto will be a solution allowing for localized deployment, typically at the consumer level covering a single dwelling unit, of a licensed spectrum access point which facilitates seamless handover between it and the macro network.

My largest issue are these claims of pent up consumer demand (consumers just don’t know it yet). Thes are based on the assumption that consumers will at a minimum pay a recurring service charge, obtain high bandwidth backhaul and possibly purchase the femto hardware.  Translated, the consumer will pay a premium to fix coverage gaps in the service providers network. For those wanting more, the Femto Forum asserts that femto will deliver services that only femto cells operating in a licensed spectrum can offer (read wireless operator FMC only).

I shudder to think what innovative service I can only get on a restricted device versus a WiFi enabled one today. But this is not a femto versus WiFi or any other technology issue. The fact remains that wireless operators have holes in their coverage and the impending demand for more mobile bandwidth capacity will only strain the operation of their macro networks.

From an operations perspective, femto provides relief to these problems. However, the medicine might be worse than the cure, at least for the moment. No standard exists today clearly defining how femto solutions are integrated into the network. Each solution has varying impacts to the operators network and to the device and such solution diversity only dilutes the economies of scale needed for mass market deployment. Compounding the standards issue is the shear potential for millions of these in a network presenting a nodal management nightmare not to mention the challenge of taming that much potential RF interference. But most humorous to me is the present tendency toward use of UMA based technologies, the black sheep of the FMC solutions prior to the rise of femto. Bleak? Hold that thought for the next post.