The Femto Forum released their latest findings on operators trying to manage data usage from smart phones, dongles and internet connected access devices.
The findings also reportated that operators can use femtocells to manage rapidly growing mobile broadband usage while making a healthy return on investment. Signals Research Group conducted the research.
“Over the past 12 months there has been an explosion in data usage due to dongles, netbooks and touchscreen smartphones. Now that tablets like the iPad promise to further add to the network load, operators are looking at new and innovative ways to leverage this growth and turn it into an opportunity,” said Simon Saunders, The Femto Forum’s Chairman. “This report provides a detailed insight into the operator business case for employing femtocells in existing our new networks. It is now clear that femtocells properly targeted to complement and enhance macrocell deployments represent the most economical means for operators to deliver a managed mobile broadband service that meets subscriber capacity and service quality demands.”
The research looked at the impact of femtocells on various operator scenarios. More specifically, the studies included a 3G operator looking to improve the mobile broadband business case using femtocells for four separate consumer and enterprise market segments, a European 3G femtocell operator upgrading to LTE, and a greenfield operator deploying either LTE or WiMax in Asia.
The business research improves further as data use increases significantly and as operators move towards femtocell macrocell-offload, and the macrocell-offload network savings exceeded the cost of the femtocell. A potential European operator that deploys femtocells to 10 percent of their customer base is able to get a return of more than 10 times the investment.
