| Femtocells: 10M At $50 |
| Written by Dave Burstein |
| Saturday, 01 August 2009 16:48 |
A large carrier such as Verizon willing to buy in the millions is being quoted $50 each, two sources confirm. All current  purchases are for much lower quantities and typically priced at over $100/each. Suddenly, the cost of a nationwide deployment is no longer a barrier.
I've previously reported that AT&T has made the strategic decision to deploy 5-10M femtos for a cloud across the United States, potentially doubling their effective spectrum. They are still not satisfied the technology works well enough, however, with interference issues remaining hard to solve in dense areas. I had the chance at the CITI anniversary event to ask Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon about femtos, and his eyes lit up at the opportunity. He wouldn't say anything beyond "our trials are very interesting," but he made a point of telling me to "ask Shaygan Kheradpir" about this. Shaygan was at a nearby table, and showed remarkable enthusiasm as well. But neither made a firm committment, and I believe the company hasn't decided whether to deploy before the LTE generation in 2012-2014. 40-50% of "mobile" calls in the U.S. are from home or office; diverting many of them to femtos with DSL backhaul takes the burden off the network. The calls will be much higher quality, as compared to the frequent problems people now have with indoor calls. U.S. femtos will probably be proprietary, locking customers to a particular carrier. 2Wire, part-owned by AT&T, discussed home gateways with a femto built in back in 2007. Softbank and Vodafone are the other two large carriers with apparent interest. But none are ready for a mass deployment.
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