Date: 08/11/2012

Femtocell survey by Infonetics projects 211K femtocell subscribers by 2013

Market research firm Infonetics Research completed interviews with more than 25% of the operators in the world that have already launched or plan to launch femtocell services by 2013. Below are some of the results shared by the researcher:

The top drivers for offering residential femtocell services are improving mobile broadband and voice within the home, and offloading data traffic from macro networks
29% of operators surveyed plan to offer FD-LTE femtocell services by 2013
WiFi, long seen as a competitor to the growth of femtocells in the home, is increasingly being viewed as complimentary by carriers
Service provider respondents project they will have, on average, 211,000 femtocell subscribers by 2013

“Operators are still very much focused on using femtocells to deliver better voice coverage, but our 2012 residential femtocell survey identifies a shift toward a more strategic utilization of femtocells for enhancing the mobile broadband experience and as a means for delivering value-added services like virtual home phone numbers and media file sharing,” explains Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload, and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics.

“But,” Webb adds, “The business model for more sophisticated femtocell services remains a big question mark. For the market to evolve, vendors need to help operators on pricing and service models so they can drive volumes and enable new service revenue. If it adds up, there’s a real opportunity to leverage the femtocell to put the mobile network at the heart of the home network—something that’s traditionally been beyond the reach of the mobile operator.”