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Femtocells to the Rescue? Operators, Be Careful with the Rollout (Part 3 of 3)
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October 19, 2009

Femtocells to the Rescue? Operators, Be Careful with the Rollout (Part 3 of 3)

By TMCnet Special Guest
Ian Goetz, Director of Core Solutions at AIRCOM International


(Editor’s Note: What follows, “Why Network Planning for Femtocells (News - Alert) is Critical,” is the final installation of a 3-part series. Please find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)


 

Until now, the ownership of the mobile network infrastructure has resided with operators. Any expansion, adjustments, and new cell sites have been exclusively controlled by them. Femtocells introduce another layer to the infrastructure – a layer where subscribers have complete control over the deployment of the cell site. This means that an operator could potentially face thousands of mini 3G base stations going “live” on the same day with no prior knowledge of location. The new sites could be anywhere, from 50 units in an apartment or office building to a single deployment in a country house.

 

Interference is created as multiple femtocell signals “leak” into and disrupt the macro network, impeding performance and impairing customer experience. To achieve high-quality service, it is essential that network management is based on dynamic optimization. As subscribers plug in their femtocells, network managers will have to confront sudden spikes in bandwidth demand across different parts of their network at different times.

 

As a result, operators must adapt their thinking when it comes to planning and managing the radio and core networks. They must have sufficient flexibility built-in to anticipate, forecast, and adapt to the demands placed on the network by new femtocell sites.

 

Operators also need to have control mechanisms in place to ensure the femtocell can only be accessed by authorized users. Security concerns must be addressed. As femtocells use the Internet as a backhaul network, protection must be set up against threats and hackers, and the femtocell must be identifiable by the mobile network as safe.

 

The introduction of femtocells will have a significant impact on the traffic carried over a subscriber’s home or office broadband link. Voice and data traffic from the femtocell is carried back to the mobile network via a DSL broadband connection. Data rates for that DSL network are quoted between the subscriber’s home and the local exchange where the DSLAM (digital subscriber line access multiplexer)/MSAN (multiservice access node)is located. After that, there is a contended IP network to the ISP interconnect point. This configuration means that, as broadband data traffic from all sources builds up, the contention ratio provides some control.

 

Contention ratios vary between broadband providers and can be significantly more than 10:1. As femtocells experience their busy hours at exactly the same time as the IP broadband networks are at their most contended, this “perfect storm of traffic” can have a degrading impact on the QoS offered by femtocells.

 

Many DSL operators throttle the bandwidth for some applications (e.g. peer-to-peer) and, if femtocell traffic begins to draw a significant amount of resources on the broadband DSL networks for no financial gain to them, traffic from the femtocells could be throttled to provide space for other applications. As a result, operators need to consider service level agreements with ISPs and have the capability to monitor those networks to ensure their service quality.

 

Operators around the world have launched live 3G femtocell trials, with a view to going live with commercially available products and services later this year or early 2010. However, unless operators can forecast and plan appropriately for the mass adoption of femtocells and the potential disruption they could cause, there is a very real risk of upsetting the performance of their entire network.

 

To ensure that femtocells complement rather than complicate their mobile network, operators need to create an intelligent, dynamic network model that constantly updates itself, and factors in the new patterns and traffic models generated by femtocells. Seamless introduction of femtocells will mean that operators will reap the potential of one of the most exciting new opportunities for revenue creation yet.


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Edited by Michael Dinan


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