Hello would you like to have a base station?
Well, not really base station doesn’t fit my house. So how about a tiny base station that sits somewhere in the corner of house. Sounds interesting?
Basically, a mobile is connected to a base station all the time to make or receive calls the stations are huge antennas and serve hundreds of people.
These bases stations are connected to the operators core network. Since the spectrum is limited, the base station can serve only limited number of people at a time if the network is congested then the calls start dropping that’s the case with voice network.
No congestions, no more low speeds. Yes, the technology is here. Well, its not exactly in India yet, but hope it will be soon. The base stations are reduced to size of your palm and are called as “Femto Cells”.These femto cells are small access points that can be bought once installed at your home, it will have a secure connection to the service providers network.
Once you switch on your mobile, instead of camping on to the base station, will camp on to the femto cell since the power from it is much higher than the base station.
The spectrum will be same as the base stations so no more congestions but fetmos cover a limited area, say 25 meters in radius. Femtos can be configured for various services like a welcome message once you connect to them. 
Femto’s never made a business case in Indian markets till now. But with 3G coming, femtos does make a good business strategy to operators as well as customers. Enterprise can also make most of it by installing femtos that serve their employees. Things does get better, but with some security drawbacks.This was a quick peak into the maybe future, but lets hope to see the tiny devices soon.
Lots in the way, dont miss the ride.
Ganesh August 16, 2010 at 11:27 am
Sorry, i meant to say “4MBps or higher WIRELINE broadband speeds”
Ganesh August 16, 2010 at 11:07 am
@Varun
I seriously doubt it. Even AT&Ts femto cell, reduce the BTS load because they route the voice data through the IP network of your broadband. People in US can use this because, they have about 4MBps or higher wireless broadband speeds.
Consider the same situation in India. We have 512kbps to 1MBps connections and you keep watching youtube. Either BB speed suffers or the femto cells voice suffers.
If you still insist, they have independent back haul, what do they use? Is it a wireless tech or what?
Most BTS’s back haul are in the range of several Megs to GBs. They either use fiber optics or microwave. I doubt a femto cell can use either of those. And these are the only ways network congestion can actually be reduced!
Santosh August 16, 2010 at 9:03 am
@gaurang
There are quite a few reasons for article to be not in detail. First, femtos are still emerging. The real meaning to femtos would come into picture with LTE (Home eNB’s) which still is not in deployment. The existing 3G femtos are used by operators in different ways. Its just the way you look at it. May be it used to enhance the coverage, may be it is used to provide customers nice 3G coverage at their home so that base stations are less overloaded, may be the femtos shall run on existing dsl internet line that customers has. As I said business cases vary from place to place and still there is no real use case for femtos in India. Netbooks may drive femtos, but still wait and watch.
Varun August 15, 2010 at 12:47 pm
The femtocell will have their independent backhaul and will not redirect traffic to the base station. They will be fully functional base stations, albeit with a smaller footprint. Thus they add both coverage and capacity.
@gaurang
Varun August 15, 2010 at 12:43 pm
That is incorrect. Femtocells increase both coverage and capacity unlike a repeater and hence they do offload the network as well.
@Ganesh
gaurang August 15, 2010 at 10:45 am
Dear Santosh,
I think this article doesn’t give clear picture as to how femtocells are usefull in reducing network congestion and thus call drops.You are saying that it’s home base station and thus reduces the congestion on main base station of service provider.As you say it’ll be connected to mobile service providers BTS so ultimatley it takes that route only for making calls so how it reduces the network congestion if your calls are taking the same route.The maximum it can do is to increase the network strentgh the way you explained it.
Now as far as I know it works differently.Femtocells are mainly meant for convergence.Once installed ,when you are at home your calls from mobile takes wireline route and thus reduce the burden on Mobile network.This Fixed mobile convergence.And since the calls are taking wireline route thus it helps in reduction of network congestion on Mobile network.
Santosh August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Hi all,
Femtos are not in India yet. There is no real business case to it yet in India. I do have few ideas in my mind regarding how this solution could be launched. May be later. But if I am not out of my mind femtos should be freely distributed.
As someone pointed Femtos does increase the service provider network and does help in reducing the congestion at the base station. West and East are still experimenting and device does work pretty well. Hope we get them in India soon.
rajiev August 14, 2010 at 12:16 pm
cost does matter!
ARJUN.C August 14, 2010 at 11:20 am
NICE PRODUCT. WHAT’S THE COST OF THIS IN INDIA?
Keshav Jha August 14, 2010 at 9:23 am
Interesting device. Is it a complete solution of no network problem of any operator?
Merc August 13, 2010 at 10:12 pm
femto cells work by routing the calls via broadband network at home. looking at the current broadband infrastructure n power cuts we have in india, Femto cells are very very distinct dream
ajay August 13, 2010 at 9:34 pm
i saw this article some days ago in ndtv….
its interesting… hope user friendly.
Agnivo August 13, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Nano, pico and femto cells are already in action in many SE Asian countries and cities… like Korea, Singapore etc. Installed in shopping malls, cafes and places where the signal gets muffled due to the concrete jungle, they do a good job!
mumBHAI August 13, 2010 at 8:59 pm
MTNL had floated a tender a year back for these Femto cells …
Amit.g August 13, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Nice article santosh! Your articles help a lot
ved August 13, 2010 at 7:37 pm
thats really great even if it reducing indoor network problm
Mahmood Junaid August 13, 2010 at 7:33 pm
need a femto soon since i think this docomo peoples r nt gng to put a tower at ma locality…
Webly Gomes August 13, 2010 at 6:46 pm
But, it should work for all the operators.
Ganesh August 13, 2010 at 6:43 pm
“These bases stations are connected to the operators core network. Since the spectrum is limited, the base station can serve only limited number of people at a time if the network is congested then the calls start dropping that’s the case with voice network.”
Ha ha! I doubt it is the case. Femto cells are NOT for reducing congestion! But rather extending the coverage indoors (like repeater). One such station is MicroCell of AT&T (but they connect via wireline BB). If your experience, low signal strength indoors, then you can use femtocells to increase the signal strength. Nothing more.
Anirban Mukherjee August 13, 2010 at 6:40 pm
it seems that it can put a fullstop in case of network coverage problem.
Webly Gomes August 13, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Nice device….
Would love to grab it as soon as possible.
Anirban Mukherjee August 13, 2010 at 6:31 pm
@Santosh:
is it only for GSM or for CDMA too????