Small cells are helping to take us one step closer to universal mobile. Below is a window display from an SFR store in France.
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It says:
Only SFR offers you the most complete network
- 98% of French population covered by 3G+
- Femto: home network booster
- Nearly 4 million Wi-Fi hotspots across France
And you’ll find similar examples popping up all over the world. The underlying message in campaigns like this is new, focusing on the customer experience for voice and data as a whole, and not on the separate technologies that underpin each part of the experience.
Small cells help to complete the mobile experience by providing service where it was previously unaffordable, and they help to integrate existing technologies into a more coherent service. They operate closer to mobile users, delivering data at close to headline rates with a marked increase in device battery life. In public spaces they boost high speed data capacity precisely where it is needed, whilst driving down the cost of providing the service:
- Adaptive automation that reduces operational management costs
- Use of low-cost internet backhaul
- Integration with existing Wi-Fi infrastructure
So small cells are playing a major part in this quiet revolution. In homes and businesses femtocells are providing universal fixed-line levels of coverage quality. In public places small cell hotspots are harmonising cellular and Wi-Fi data services to provide a faster, simpler and safer mobile broadband experience.
