The Femtocell Business Case
Femtocells are being deployed all over the world to solve in-building coverage and capacity challenges and to support new services.
The business case is strong, resting on three main benefits:
Improved coverage
With about a third of mobile calls made at home – plus those made in offices and shops – poor indoor coverage is a major cause for customer dissatisfaction.
A global consumer research study conducted by Parks Associates and published by the Femto Forum shows that voice coverage issues are a key reason for customer to churn. Femtocell can help to address this and the impact is modelled in the business case published by the Femto Forum.
Offload the macro network
With the explosion in the demand for data, femtocells offer operators a way of delivering Gigabytes of data to users at significantly lower costs than over the macro network using the customer's broadband connection for backhaul. This impact of this saving depends on the amount of data a household consumes. In the business case the customer lifetime value of different types of customers is analysed in detail.
Increased demand for new services
Femtocells also encourage the adoption of mobile data services by providing faster data speeds and better user experiences inside the home where new services are often tried first. Femtocells can also act as a platform for delivering new and innovative services, such as virtual fridge notes or home remote control.
Download the business case
These and many other aspects of the overall case for femtocells are modelled in the in-depth business case developed by Signals Research and published by the Femto Forum, which can be downloaded directly from the Femto Forum website here
