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Femtocell-Aware Mobile Handsets
Disruptive Analysis, June 2008, Pages: 91
The femtocell industry is currently focusing on the short term – getting initial trials in place, developing standards, and securing commitments for early commercial deployment. These are all critical to validate the market, raise the profile of the femto concept, and stimulate finance and investment. A central marketing proposition is that femtocells can work with normal 3G handsets, without needing subscribers to be provided with expensive upgrades to their existing phones.
But while focus is good – and the industry does not want unnecessary distractions – there is a risk of medium-term failure if certain future problems are not addressed early enough, even if this muddies the waters of the short-term marketing message. Already, femto proponents are talking up massmarket business models that go beyond simple indoor coverage and macro-network offload. They are talking about 10’s of millions of subscribers, and new “in-home” services for users, that exploit fast and cheap local mobile connectivity.
It is at that stage that handset innovations become more important. In part, this relates to complexities in managing the radio environment and mobility between femtocell and macrocell networks. Various optimisations are desirable, especially when dense deployments of femtos occurs. These drive changes in areas such as the way the phone “selects” cells on which to register. There may also need to be ways to offer provisioning and “guest access” on femtocells, from the handset UI. But the medium-term hopes of the industry also reflect the notion that people will use their cellphones differently when in range of femtos. There will be different applications and behavioural patterns when people are at home – perhaps content backups, podcasts or even advertiser-sponsored TV programming. The mobile phone may need to linked to TV, PC, HiFi or other items of domestic technology.
This report argues that if the phone will be used differently, it needs to be designed differently as well. Standard phones can work with femtocells, but they are not optimised. Certain applications may only work when the phone is within femto range – but they need to know when that is. Yes, some services can be notified by the core network that the user is “at home”, but that approach doesn’t scale to a wide base of operators, application developers and handset/OS vendors. The phone needs to be “aware” of the femtocell, ideally both in the radio and the application platform.
Changing such elements is not quick. The handset industry is much more complex and slow-moving than many in the wider wireless business understand. It takes often 2-3 years for changes in handset architecture to reach commercially-sold handsets, and another 2-3 years to reach a broad range of devices and reasonable penetration within the user base.
Beliefs that the femtocell industry needs to be much more openminded about the need for modifying and optimising handsets – and to be alert to the huge time and effort it will take to achieve. Other mobile developments like UMA and IMS have suffered in the past from a lack of focus on this issue. Although many femto advocates fear distractions could delay immediate market acceptance, early consideration of these “2nd order” problems is necessary for longer-term success.
Highlights
- Today’s 3G handsets will work acceptably with femtocells at a basic level.
- Baseline forecast is for 19m femtos to ship in 2013, with an installed base of c30m homes. Some other predictions are much higher.
- Massmarket rollouts of femtocells present future challenges in terms of handset radio protocols, and also application support.
- The mobile network industry generally underestimates the time taken to add capabilities to handsets, and get widespread adoption of the new devices.
- The industry also underestimates the amount of work needed to get new concepts working in the hands of the end user. New protocols often require revised client applications and user interface elements – and rigorous testing.
- It can take 2-3 years from concept to commercialisation for new handset features, and another 2+ years for a wide range of phones to be available.
- In dense deployments of femtocells, handsets can spend too much time & power attempting to connect at locations that are not their own “home zone”.
- There can also be issues where handsets “reselect” the macro network under certain conditions, rather than remaining connected to the femtocell.
- Various scenarios for provisioning femto access could benefit from a client application on the phone – for example, enabling “guest access”.
- The new 3GPP Release 8 specifications contain various modifications to enable handsets to work better with femtos (called Home NodeB’s)
- The first R8-compliant phones will likely be shipped at the end of 2010.
- Various suggestions have been made for “femto-zone” services - but there is no standardised way for handset applications to “know” they are on the femto.
- Although there are various workarounds, with the network notifying the application when the phone is attached to the femto, this approach is not easily scalable to the wider base of developers or operators.
- The best solution is for handset “connection manager” software to explicitly recognise femtocell access as a new and specific type of bearer.
- Handset OS platforms should expose interfaces (APIs) for application developers to determine when the phone is in a femtozone.
- The most likely femto-aware applications are for content backup & sharing, automated downloads, presence, integration with home consumer electronics, VoIP and security/authentication.
- There are opportunities for new types of femto-centric mobile device, intended just for use in the home. An example is a standalone 3G radio.
- Usage of handsets on femtocells may throw up unexpected side-effects, relating to faster / cheaper data connections. This may impact elements of design such as memory allocation and power management.
- Operators could benefit from new revenue streams from advertisers & other third parties by enabling the provision of “at home” services via femtocells.
- Using baseline forecasts, there should be a demand for at least 48m femto-aware handsets to be sold to femtocell owners in 2013.
- However, with more optimistic forecasts, and especially if “shared” femtocell models become popular, there could potentially be a demand for up to 300m femto-aware handsets per year in 2013.
Structure of this report
- Executive summary
- Recommendations: This chapter gives quick and actionable take-outs of the report for various different stakeholders, such as mobile operators, device and femtocell vendors, application developers and consultants.
- Introduction: Provides a succinct overview of the argument for femto-aware handsets.
- Background - the femtocell rationale: Examines the benefits of femtocells, the current and forecast market status for their adoption, and outlines the companies and industry bodies involved in their manufacture and standardisation.
- Handsets & optimisation – an overview: This gives an introduction to handset architecture and the structure of the mobile phone industry, explaining how modifications can be introduced, the timelines involved, and the forecast market size for femto-aware phones.
- Femto-friendly device design & form factors: Looks at the possibilities in modifying the exterior design of handsets for use with femtocells, and the opportunities for future femtocell-only devices.
- Femtos & RF, protocol stack & hardware layer: Examines the issues around handset-network integration, specifically in issues such as cell selection/reselection and the provisioning/administration of femto access from the standpoint of both operator and end user. It also examines other hardware design considerations such as memory and power management.
- Handset OS and “connection manager”: This looks at the critical role of the phone OS in enabling applications to become “femto-aware”. It examines ongoing development of connection management in the key handset
platforms currently in use.
- Femtocell-specific applications & user interface: This examines some of the possible innovative femto-aware applications that could be developed, enabling unique or enhanced user experience when the device is in range of its home cell.
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