Femtocells and Mobile Data
Last time, we looked into the big numbers that characterize the stuff moving over the Internet - Exabytes, Zettabytes, Yottabytes.
This week, we’ll look at another set of numbers, used to define things very small. These are numbers to the left of zero - nano, pico, femto. (And, after that, atto, zepto, yocto.)
Why care? In data networking, it’s a symbiotic thing - the larger the volume of data, the greater the need to break the network into smaller and smaller coverage areas, to handle the load.
Why care now? Hello, iPhone 4, with the camera on the front for wireless video calls. Hello, iPad, with your video splendor! The glut of chatty, bandwidth-assuming gadgets at the ends of (AT&T’s) mobile network means challenges in keeping all the bits flowing in the right direction, at the right time. It’s not for the faint of plant.
Here’s how Apple CEO Steve Jobs put it, at the “D8″ conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month: “I’m convinced that any other network, if you put this many iPhones on it, would’ve had the same problems.”
That was a week before the launch of the iPhone 4.
It brings to mind the early “video phones.” Remember? In the 1980s, you could go to an AT&T store to try it. This was way before broadband as we know it. Engineers at the time always recommended a feigned sneeze, to test the capabilities of the connection. Sneezes aren’t an issue now (pollen notwithstanding).
Traffic congestion is why AT&T in March launched a “femtocell” product - a $150 box for the home or building, marketed as a “mini cellular tower in your home.” In this case, the “femto” in “femtocell” is more marketing than actual numbers.
In marketing-speak, the “femtocell” is next in the progression after the pico cell. Either way, it’s an indoor access point to make sure you still have five bars of signal in your building, even if you’re deep within it. In short, the femtocell is more of a personal cell, while picocells are for an area.
Femtocells are relatively new, mostly because it’s taken time to cost-reduce them into an affordable state.
For the people who watch over mobile broadband bandwidth, femtocells are a part of what one wireless pal calls “the densification” of the plant - adding more access points, buttressed with DOCSIS-based backhaul.
The cable angle is in the backhaul. It’s about femtocell (or picocell) access points, hooked to DOCSIS modems, to offload the traffic. That Wi-Fi federation of cable companies on the East Coast, hooked up together so that people can get a good strong broadband signal, wherever they are? That’s DOCSIS-based backhaul.
Squawk commented:
The effort is clearly to intended to unload voluminous data traffic that is anticipated as the populace moves to Smartphones, increasing the ability to send/receive videos, photos & the like. However, the initial purpose of the femtocell was to provide good coverage for primarily voice, where there is typically poor or none, as inside buildings.
AT&T's experience with the i-Phone has highlighted for the carriers the need to unload large data transmissions off their cellular networks to ensure network integrity for the majority of mobile subscribers.
Given the latter strategy, it's a good question as to at what point will the wireline carrier is going to clamp down on data usage as the wireless carriers are now beginning to do.
Rick Melzig commented:
Well, in the unlimited DSL plan I have with VZ, of course. Meanwhile, I would pay for space (in lieu of tower or rooftop real estate) and power (it adds up) as well. Gotta figure all those cell sites constrained by backhaul issues vs. my VZ DSLAM sitting in an old CO well fed with fiber - or well supplied with PVC conduits underground (the ultimate in bandwidth versatility - one can yell through them or pack with thousands of fiber strands).
Jim commented:
Great. Makes perfect sense. How are the wireline broadband access carriers to be compensated for carrying the femtocell traffic? What a win for the wireless carriers. The consumer pays (buys) to install a device that offloads wireless data traffic onto the cable or telco dumb pipe. Wireless guys avoid carrying traffic on their 3G network and the consumer picks up the tab for the device and the broadband connection. But how are the wireline access carriers to be paid for carrying all this traffic from the home and office building back to an access point to the Internet?