3G home gateways: opportunities and challenges

3G home gateways: opportunities and challenges

This report examines residential femtocells, also called cellular home gateways. These are small cellular access points which provide cellular wireless access inside the home and open up new business opportunities for the mobile operator.

3G home gateway solutions are still in their early development stages. As of early 2007, only femtocell prototypes are being used in lab testing. Operators’ trials in 2007 will have to analyse two key technical issues: firstly, radio interference between the femtocells and the public infrastructure’s macrocells; secondly, the core network integration of femtocells. Should the cellular home gateways be a success, there could be millions of new cellular access points added to cellular networks. There is thus an important scaleability challenge, both in terms of radio management and network architecture.

Included in this report are forecasts for Western Europe and market development scenarios.

Table of contents

Key messages

Definitions

Why put a cellular access point in the home?

High-level principles of the femtocell concept
The mobile is used a lot at home
Benefits of femtocells
Challenges of developing femtocells

Key requirements
Network architecture
Operators will push for a standard
Femtocell products
Strategies for operators

Potential business models for operators
Service strategies
Business case issues
Market development scenario
Femtocell strategies for new entrants
Table of figures

Figure 1 Overview of cell types in cellular networks
Figure 2 The femtocell concept
Figure 3 Connect femtocells to the RNC via the Iub interface
Figure 4 Manage femtocells with concentrators
Figure 5 Adapt the UMA solution
Figure 6 SIP/IMS
Figure 7 Overview of possible business models for femtocells
Figure 8 Revenues and costs for the femtocell business case
Figure 9 Femtocell market development scenario
Figure 10 Residential femtocells in Western Europe