It's no secret femtocells have stalled in
the industry.
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| The 90% with a 10% coverage problem |
Routinely operators say
they believe that approximately 10% (or less) of their subscribers have acoverage problem. Yet even the largest
deployments typically address less than 1% of an operator’s subscriber
base.
Femtocells are at loggerheads –
consumers don’t want to buy them to fix something they expect from the operator
(namely coverage) and operators can’t afford to subsidize them to the 10% that
need them.
Clearly the problem of coverage isn't solved.
But I think perhaps the
definition of the 10% is mis-understood.
The assumption that 10% of subscribers are coverage challenged implies
that 90% of their subscribers don’t have an issue.
It’s more subtle than
that. Coverage isn’t an all or nothing
proposition.
I think of it like
this: More likely, 90% of subscribers
have a coverage problem in 10% of the places they go during the day. It may be that some of those places aren’t as
important as others, but for some, the problem is inside the home, or in their
office or a conference room or some place where they really need reliable
service.
In these locations, there
is a need for femtocell capabilities, but a physical femtocell has proven to be
impractical.
What’s needed is a dynamic
application that gives subscribers the ability to enable femtocell capabilities
when and where they need it – basically coverage on demand.
This is what Kineto’sSmart Wi-Fi application provides. It
delivers a femtocell experience (better coverage, offload, capacity) from any
Wi-Fi access point, anywhere in the world.
It’s an app that sits dormant on the phone until subscribers need
coverage, and then Voila! – any Wi-Fi access point will do.
The need for a better,
faster mobile experience remains, and will only get more urgent as smartphones
proliferate. Smart Wi-Fi is the first,
and only tool, mobile operators can give their subscribers that improves the
mobile network experience without breaking the bank.
