Opinion
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Femtocell Opinion, comment and reviews
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Sprint 
It's remarkably common these days to see people with two mobile phones. One provided by work; another for personal use. Often the work mobile is a basic model, frequently without 3G capability, and used for voice and text services only. The personal mobile is likely to have many more features, be much more stylish, with camera, music and location capabilities.
Femtocells, like many new technologies, are maturing and overcoming the technical obstacles which have arisen during trials and testing. Increasing intelligence and self-tuning of these smartboxes ensures minimum disruption of the existing macrocellular network. RF propagation studies have shown the impact and feasibility of high traffic levels in areas of heavy takeup. 
In a recent interview, Lauren Town, Head of Marketing at Orange, said the operator was not looking to replace its current Unik WiFi UMA service with 3G femtocells. What is the likely evolutionary path for existing UMA services and can they co-exist with femtocells?
Vodafone Italy has 
I’ve been struck recently by the number of places offering free WiFi these days. Pubs, cafés, hotels, guest houses – why even 
Progress is being made in the standardisation process for femtocells. Kineto have helpfully provided an 
Will femtocells be consumed into a central Mega-Hub for each household? We are already seeing products which combine broadband modems, routers, print servers and femtocells in one box - is more consolidation likely?
What is the “secret sauce” that femtocell vendors add to the mix. With major component vendors such as picoChip providing reference designs for femtocells, you may think there is little to be done apart from assembling the components. Femtocell vendors on the other hand seek to differentiate themselves by adding value with specialist expertise.
Intellectual Property is the “other meaning” of the term IP (sometimes also known as IPR for Intellectual Property Rights). How will this "tax" apply to femtocells and derived products? [Note: Earlier link error fixed - click through to view the article]
In a recent exclusive interview with ThinkFemtocell.com, Manish Singh, VP Product Management for Continuous Computing revealed their company has an astonishing 23 active engagements in the femtocell marketplace. This suggests that many more "undeclared" vendors may be joining the fray having identified strong market potential.
Do femtocells offload the type of data traffic that would make a difference to the macrocellular network?
An important part of the business case for femtocells for operators is to offload their macrocellular network, so they don’t need to invest as much in their basestations. If a large part of the network traffic is handled locally by femtocells and connected through customer’s own broadband internet, then significantly less investment will be required. Less additional radio equipment on each cellsite, less backhaul (transmission from the cellsites to the operator’s main switching centres) and potentially reducing the need for additional sites in heavily congested areas.
What's the likely market for TD-SCDMA femtocells? picoChip obviously think there is one - they previously announced a reference design using their chipset. But will this standard be limited to China only, and does it justify additional consideration? 
Although many initial models of femtocells are standalone devices, which connect via Ethernet to a broadband IP modem, several vendors have already developed integrated DSL modem/WiFi/VoIP and 3G femtocell products. These include major DSL modem players partnering with the small independent femtocell vendors, such as Netgear/Ubiquisys, Thomson/Airvana and the larger players such as Alcatel-Lucent/Sagem.
I visited India this week. What’s that got to do with femtocells, you may ask? The point is that the country which will shortly become No.2 by subscribers (ahead of US, behind China) is quite unsuitable for 3G femtocells both now and in the foreseeable future. This focuses the mind on some market segmentation for femtocells.
Femtozones are additional services enabled within the coverage footprint of a femtocells. For our purposes, we’ve excluded any changes or updates to other equipment in the home which involves a much more integrated/managed network solution. All that’s required for a femtozone is to install and connect a 2G or 3G femtocell at the user’s home or office and connect it to broadband. This means that any of the main femtocell system architectures can be used to provide femtozones.