First femtocells stick to 3g

Operator 02 expects to deploy some femtocell home cellular base stations next year with the price per unit falling to between £50 and £80 as production ramps up.

The company announced last week that it is starting a UK trial of femtocells, which provide better home coverage for mobile handsets and allow operators to make more intensive use of costly spectrum.

John Carvelho, head of core network innovation at O2, said in an emailed reply to questions from PCW, that the first femtocell deployment will use 3g HSDPA links offering downstream transfer rates of up to 7.2Mbit/sec, and 2Mbit/sec upstream is HSUPA is implemented.

This means downstream data rates are likely to be limited not by the wireless link but by the customer's own broadband connection, which is used to link the femtocell back to the operator.

The system will be closed – that is only authorised householders will have access to it. But Carvelho said there might be a case for an open system, with femtocells providing access to the general public, in places like stadiums – but that would be contingent on the size of the fixed broadband pipe.

Also the system will initially support only services available on the outdoor network. It will not do Wifi-style links across the home network.

However, Carvelho points out that O2's parent Telefonica has interests in home multimedia technologies like uPnP and DLNA. "These sharing mechanisms may be integrated into femtocell technology at a later date but these will be a function of user demand."

Asked if femtocells will support LTE, the technology that seems likely to be adopted for 4g links, Carvelho said: "If trials and deployments are successful one would see femtocell technology, as part of the network, evolve to support all requirements."

Not unexpectedly, he hedged when asked about the cost to the customer. But evidently femtocells will be offered as a part of a bundle of services including DSL broadband, getting round the problem of who should pay for the additional fixed-line traffic they cause.

Carvelho wrote: "We are currently analysing how to offer a compelling proposition to our customers which may draw on our extended suite of offers, such as broadband."

See our Test Bed blog for the full text of the Q&A with Carvelho.