Small is beautiful: put a cell tower in your house

Small is beautiful: put a cell tower in your house

Femtocells sound vaguely like a cross between a Feynman diagram and a biology class, but they’re the latest piece of gear that millions of people will soon want in their homes without having missed them before. A femtocell is a small cellular base station designed to provide superior, short-range, indoor cellular coverage in a home or office. The idea behind femtocells is simple: the hardware tries to capture the ease of setup of a Wi-Fi network while allowing seamless connectivity for existing cell phones.

Woojune Kim, the vice president of technology at Airvana, a mobile broadband and femtocell equipment maker, explained the thinking behind femtocells. “Can you take the economics of the last 10 to 20 years, where we’re able to make very small wireless transmitters like Wi-Fi base stations—can you make cellular base stations small enough and at that price point so that each of us can have our personal base station?” The answer, after years of trying, is yes.

The compact base stations are a cheap way for mobile carriers to
improve coverage, while remaining relatively inexpensive for consumers
to get service outside a ground floor, in rural areas, or in places in
which their carriers have fallen down in meeting their needs. (Yes,
we’re looking at you, AT&T, at least for now.)

Femtocells have been “coming next year” for at least four years, but
after successful introductions in 2008 and 2009 in tests and initial
rollouts, 2010 will be the first year for mass adoption. Analysts expect
hundreds of thousands of units to be in place this year, with tens of
millions sold each year by 2013 or 2014 worldwide.