3G Home Base Stations To Challenge WiFi VOIP

The battle for the home network is far from won, by any side. Ultra-low-cost home base stations have some serious advantages in this battle, especially in the area of price. A recent research paper by Unstrung Insider indicates that the competitive advantage offer by the 3G home base stations is real.

"3G Home Base Stations: Femto Cells & FMC for the Masses" identifies key market opportunities for emerging femto cell technology and analyzes the product strategies and roadmaps of more than a dozen leading providers of home base stations. The major benefits of home base station technology for mobile operators include the ability to provide capacity that scales in line with subscriber demand, a reduced requirement to deploy additional macro carriers to support indoor users, and an opex requirement that is kept in check by IP backhaul paid for by the customer.

There are still a great number of hurdles to be overcome for Femto Cells, but the plan merits a great deal of consideration before it's ignored by anyone. As stated in this report: "There's a desire to move as fast as possible towards a flat all-IP architecture using IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) applications for cross-network call control, but operators are also evaluating alternative mechanisms, such as Iub over IP or Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA)/Generic Access Network (GAN), as interim approaches."