Earlier this year we tried to de-mystify the residential femtocell with an infographic, an exercise that seemed to be well-received judging by the number of downloads (and some welcome imitations).
Now we’ve moved on, to try to do the same thing for enterprise femtocells. The timing is good, with operators like Network Norway reporting great customer feedback six months after their commercial launch.
Feel free to share this infographic around – we always love to see that our work is being talked about.
Enterprise has always been an obvious application for femtocells. The shape and construction of commercial premises means that indoor coverage is often poor, and yet the majority of businesses want to go mobile to enjoy the productivity gains and employee satisfaction benefits. Operators already have established solutions for large companies in large buildings, but complex planning and installation make picocells and DAS-type systems too expensive for smaller companies or for branches in smaller buildings. Until enterprise femtocells came along, this left mobile operators with a gap in their service portfolio for their largest group of business customers.
What’s different about enterprise femtocells is software intelligence. Putting automatic radio engineering inside the box changes the economics completely – you don’t need experts to install, you don’t need complex central controllers, and the femtocells are self-managing, self optimising and self-healing in operation.
Self-organising networks are rightly talked-up as the future of mobile, but what many don’t realise is that they are quietly going about their business today.
