A Note On Femtocells And Wi-Fi

Femtocells are small base stations that operators place in homes or ‎businesses to improve coverage and capacity for users. Femtocells and Wi-‎Fi were both seen to be competing with each other. From the competing angle debate the momentum has shifted to having both technologies ‎working together to gain advantage. Wi-Fi and Femto can now be used for ‎data services and voice based applications respectively, as has been ‎demonstrated by Ubiquisys.‎

‎The number of Femtocells in use both in the US and the world has exceeded ‎the consumption of macrocells. As femtocells need radio frequency ‎planning, this could be adopted in LTE upgrades rather than on existing ‎networks. Due to its small size, and lower costs, they are more suitable to be ‎used as base stations, even inside buildings as the space requirements for ‎femtocells are low.‎

In the case of Android based phones, software solutions are available that ‎can be hooked to wi-fi networks saving a lot of bother. A back-end office suffices ‎to collect and monitor user data and billing operations. Inexpensive wi-fi ‎routers also serve as coverage extenders.

Setting up a femtocells network is a problem area and optimizing a network is also rather ‎difficult. However, efforts are on to make roaming between cellular and wi-fi ‎networks automatic.‎