Home femtocells a challenge

Femtocells are gaining traction among mobile service providers, but carriers face quality challenges where the home femtocell market is concerned, says Tektronix, a technology research company.

The challenge is two-fold: Some network elements were essentially unproven in the demanding mobile network environment, and consumers continue to expect the same quality of service. According to Tektronix president Rich McBee at the CommunicAsia 2009 exhibition held in Singapore, femto networks cause network management issues such as traffic prioritization.

Having used a home femtocell unit for seven months now, I can certainly identify with what McBee is saying. The issue that I face has to do with poor quality--ranging from bad to outright unusable during peak Internet access times. The device works exactly as advertised during off-peak times.

I have spoken to an engineer from Huawei and, as I understand it, the unit that I am currently using does not yet support rate prioritization. I know my VoIP phone service does--and it works flawlessly at all hours of the day from the same cable Internet point.

For more:
- check out the article at TelecomAsia.net

Related Articles:
Verizon launching femtocell on January 25
Femtocell trials planned by AT&T later this year