Wednesday, 6 February 2008

FMC & Femtocells Heading Toward Full Convergence of Services

The hype surrounding fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) and femtocells continues to grow, but it is likely that neither technology will live up to expectations.

According to a recent study done by In-Stat, titled “Whether To FMC, or to Femtocell: That is the Question!” there is apparently much interest in fixed-mobile service (FMS) enabled by femtocells and FMC among consumers, with the promise of more convenience and lower costs.

Femtocells are micro-base stations designed for home use that support mobile connectivity over the broadband facility. FMC uses Wi-Fi-enabled routers and handsets to carry mobile calls over a broadband connection.

"In-Stat believes that by 2010 the FMC and FMS/femtocell market segments will evolve to form a new fully-converged services market segment," says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst.

"Current unlicensed mobile access (UMA) and IMS-based FMC services, which emphasize cheap phone calling, will be marginalized. Likewise, operators that deploy femtocell-based services using the same cut-rate calling value proposition will be short-lived. Converged services that emulate the home telecommunications experience will emerge because they will be more highly-valued by consumers than are individual services."

The research by also found the following:

- By 2011, over 53 million session initiated protocol (SIP)-enabled mobile handsets will ship.

- New UMA subscriber additions will peak in 2009 at approximately 3.5 million.

- By 2011, over 100 million consumers will have access to femtocell-enabled gateways.