The widespread adoption of residential broadband services has opened the home phone market to greater competition. A wide range of companies, from voice over IP (VoIP) startups to broadband service providers, now offer home phone services. Wireless service providers are better placed than anyone else to win this market if they can find a way to deliver their services to consumers at a cost structure comparable to VoIP services.
What sets wireless service providers apart from VoIP service providers is the mobile handset. Over 2 billion mobile handsets are in use today. Each mobile handset is a personal device that reflects its owner’s identity and stores a large amount of personal information – from the address book to photos and music.
The expanded capabilities of 3G networks allow wireless operators to further enrich the home calling experience. Mobile handsets, unlike analog phones, are powerful multimedia platforms. With a 3G data connection, these handsets can allow consumers to buy music online, download podcasts, make high-quality video calls, upload photos over the air, and more. According to
3G Today,
over 461 million 3G devices are in use worldwide. A richer experience not only translates into higher annual revenue per user than basic voice services, but also stronger customer pull and retention.
Femtocells – low-cost 3G access points that connect to an operator’s core network over the consumer’s broadband IP connection – enable wireless service providers to provide a home phone solution. Consumers will be able to easily install femtocells at home and use them to access the service provider’s voice and data services using standard 3G handsets.
Femtocells will allow service providers to offer lower or flat-rate tariffs for calls made from home because they utilize consumer-supplied backhaul, power, and real estate. In addition, femtocells will offload the macro-cellular network because an estimated 35% of all calls on today’s macro-cellular networks are made from home. This network offload will allow operators to add subscribers to their network without purchasing additional macro-cellular equipment or new spectrum.
Consumers who use femtocells will benefit from lower-cost calling at home from their preferred mobile devices. They do not need to sign up with a new service provider or get a new telephone number just to reduce the cost of calls made from home. They can also now use their handset to download and upload multimedia content using their home’s high-speed data connection. Additionally, installing a femtocell at home ensures that the consumer has excellent coverage and voice quality.
Airvana brings a number of key elements to the emerging in-home coverage market:
- Ownership of CDMA and UMTS physical layer software, implemented on industry-standard digital signal processor (DSP) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms
- An Access Gateway (UAG) to connect femtocells to the core network
- Market-proven expertise in all-IP Radio Access Networks
Airvana is fully committed to the femtocell market and is investing to deliver market-leading products and solutions.
Femtocells Provide In-Home Coverage for
Mobile Operator Networks
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