Residential femtocells are expected to become a common feature, as Operators start using femtocells to extend their service offerings to residential data subscribers. The residential Femtocells will be a great choice for Operators looking into delivering personalized services such as location-based, content-related, or presence-aware applications, all of which are key to driving higher ARPU figures for MNOs in future. According to the recently released market research report by Infonetics titled 'Residential Femtocell Service Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey', mobile voice and broadband coverage improvements are the top reasons for residential Femtocell deployments, followed by mobile data offloading which reduces the strain on the cellular network and the ability to create stickier bundles which help in retaining subscribers over a longer term.
FEMTOCELL SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS
80% of operators participating in Infonetics’ survey plan to use femtocells to offer home-zone cheap-rate voice calling services by 2014, and 75% will use femtos to deliver higher mobile broadband throughput
Over half of respondent operators perceive “interference with the macro network” as a challenge to offering residential femtocell services
While 3GPP femtocells dominate the residential market today, 50% of those surveyed will offer single-mode FD-LTE femtocells by 2014
Radio coverage leads the list of desirable residential femtocell CPE features, followed by TR 069 support and a standalone form factor
Respondents are looking for a combination of quality and cost-effectiveness when selecting femtocell products: price-to-performance ratio is the 2nd highest ranked vendor selection criterion.
“Though the operators we interviewed for our latest residential femtocell study are currently focused on quality of experience, leveraging femtos to deliver 5-bar voice coverage in the home and provide faster and more consistent broadband, the picture starts to change in a year or so when femtocell-based add-on services and applications become more prominent in the market,” says Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and carrier WiFi at Infonetics Research. Webb continues: “By 2015, the focus shifts to leveraging the intelligence in the femtocell to offer a range of location-based, content-related, or presence-aware applications to drive higher ARPUs.”Source - Infonetics (Nov 8, 2013)
