I've not been terribly kind to the femtocell industry over the years. The whole idea of a customer having to (a) buy another piece of hardware, (b) have that hardware bound to a particular wireless carrier, and then (c) paying said carrier a monthly fee just to get the coverage one is supposedly already buying is unsavory at best. The fact that there's a potential for interference to the cellular network itself adds to my concerns. But even I have to admit that femtocells are indeed getting the job done for many residential users today, and, given how addicted so many are to their handsets (and who can blame them?), the femtocell is at worst a reasonable approach to solving the coverage problem.

But is it the optimal solution? I recently spent some time on the phone with key managers at the Femto Forum trade association to learn a little bit about the progress they've seen in the past few years and to again argue my concerns. Said progress is in fact undeniable: There are over 60 trials underway, and 25 committed deployments including 17 now in place. Over 300,000 femtocells have been installed in the US. Progress has also been made on management and coexistence with macrocells, and I was told that at least one carrier (AT&T) is giving away femtocells, at least under some circumstances. Customers are interested in the concept. And the Forum has high hopes for femtocells as an LTE deployment mechanism in the enterprise.

One of my major concerns, that wired carriers could cut off service to femtocells, was recently addressed at least in the US by the FCC's action on network neutrality. But as the battle over this issue continues, it's a little early to conclude that femtocells are just swell in the eyes of broadband service providers. One has to believe that a carrier like Comcast, for example, who also offers high-margin phone service, would prefer to do whatever they can get away with to build their subscriber base. Someone with a cell phone and a femtocell represents network load but no revenue, and the carriers so affected can't be pleased - which is, of course a key reason why the battle over net neutrality will most certainly continue for quite some time.

My issue with lock-in to a single carrier, however, remains. But while problematic in the enterprise and at least some households, this might not be all that big a deal for many. So, in sum, I had to admit that the whole femtocell space looks much brighter than it did a year ago.

There are, however, two other major approaches to addressing the local-coverage/indoor-service challenge, the topics for my next two entries here. The first is my personal favorite, offloading to Wi-Fi. Using more spectrum is always a reasonable direction, especially when that spectrum is free and available is great quantity thanks to the limited range of devices operating in the unlicensed bands. But as with femtocells, there are challenges and opportunities here as well, and progress has been much slower than I earlier anticipated. And the other direction is the use of repeaters, which I've studied before, or distributed antenna systems for larger venues and enterprises. I'll be reviewing another repeater next week, along with a discussion of the plusses and minuses in that strategy.