But it's still a comparatively small business. Quarterly revenues for WiMAX equipment is estimated at $400 million, compared to something in excess of $12 billion for cellular equipment worldwide - but its rapidly growing. It's entering a market which is already strongly competitive from both hotspot WiFi (often free in many public places) and cellular USB data dongles. Strongest growth is occuring in developing markets, such as India, which don't yet have 3G, where WiMAX may well be the only way to obtain broadband in many places and will fulfil a need at the right price point.

Developed countries are likely to be more of a challenge. Using WiMAX for voice is also possible (with handsets available), but these may not achieve the price point and variety of formats to compete effectively with existing 2G and 3G mobile services.

In many ways, WiMAX is being promoted as a competitor to fixed network broadband and so it is not obvious that the industry should be considering WiMAX femtocells. Typical WiMAX subscriber products include the redline subscriber unit , which receives WiMAX broadband and delivers communication services into the home using Ethernet and standard POTS telephones.

WiMAX femtocells offer the same benefits for WiMAX operators as for other technologies - providing higher capacity, higher performance services in the home and small office environment. The technology shares the same issues as 3G and 4G cellular - there is a limit to the data capacity of each cellsite, and if high volume usage can be offloaded to femtocells, then outdoor performance improves - benefitting all users.

Comcast, the large US cable operator and also a substantial shareholder of Clearwire (the US WiMAX service provider) has been indicating that they may offer WiMAX femtocells which would connect through their cable broadband networks. It issued an RFP for WiMAX femtocells a year ago. Recent reports suggest Comcast is still keen to launch a commercial WiMAX femtocell by the second half of 2009.

There are several prominently available chipset designs for WiMAX femtocells including:

• picoChip's reference design using their PC205 device, which they claim is the industry de facto standard. See picoChip video demo of their WiMAX femtocell (on YouTube)
• DesignArt networks system-on-a-chip announced September 2008. This claims to achieve a price point of less than $100, presumably linked to high volumes.
• Sequans reference design can handle up to 512 simultaneous active users

1. Low power WiMAX basestations already exist. The small form factor mean that they could be used for domestic purposes - but they would need engineering work to make them self-installing and remotely configured.
2. WiMAX is really intended for outdoor/long range use, and is marketed as a complementary solution for WiFi.
3. The WiMAX market is still at an early stage and vendors are waiting to see if it really takes off to provide the volumes required to justify product investments.
4. Femtocell vendors are focussing their strategic investments on the largest and most lucrative markets first.

WiMAX looks as if it will primarily be used to provide broadband in countries without wired infrastructure, where it will compete with HSPA and soon LTE systems from the traditional cellular operators. Femtocells require a wired broadband connection which doesn't exist in these countries, and so they are less relevant. In developed countries, which are the primary femtocell market, the jury is still out as to whether WiMAX can really gain a strong foothold against the established mobile operators. Only when, and if, that becomes the case will we see more femtocell vendors invest in WiMAX technology.

Update : South Korean Telecom announced in October 2008 they had developed a WiMAX femtocell for business use. Korea has had a public WiMAX (known as WiBro) network for some time.Their partnership with picoChip to provide the WiMAX femtocell chipset was announced way back in 2006.

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