Femtocells could help mobile operators cut down on buildouts -- and lighten their electric bills

Femtocells are a hot topic in telecom, touted as a way to make mobile customers happier through better coverage. But the in-home devices could have a hidden benefit: easing electric bills for mobile operators.

On average, operators use 5461 kilowatt hours of electricity per cell site per month, said Stuart Carlaw, vice president of mobile wireless for ABI Research. That adds up to more than 65,000 kilowatt hours per site per year, making power a top-three operating expense, he said.

“What you really need to be thinking about doing is changing those economics by bringing in a lot of that kind of coverage into more-targeted areas,” Carlaw said. “Femtocells are an ideal way of doing that because you're consuming something like five watts rather than 65,000 kilowatt hours per annum per base station, which is an interesting concept.”

Femtocells essentially are mini base stations that provide coverage for wireless users in a home. They also put the first part of backhaul there, too, as calls are routed through a home broadband connection to the core network. By providing more targeted coverage in an area, a large-scale femtocell deployment potentially could reduce the need for more macro-network buildouts — and the electricity required to power them.

“If it was just about the services, you could do this with other technologies,” said Peter Jarich, principal analyst of wireless infrastructure for Current Analysis. “Femtocells offer operator benefits the others don't. So I think from the opex standpoint — the savings standpoint — that's really front-of-mind.”

Jarich said there still is a need for macro equipment to maximize coverage, and he was unsure how much gear could be cut by deploying femtocells. But he believes they could have a real impact on power use.

In addition to coverage, network capacity is another concern with a direct effect on power costs. As mobile data services continue to evolve and become richer, the toll on networks increases, which could require operators to upgrade or build more base stations to handle traffic.

“The other reality of a femtocell is where it's applied most intelligently. You're taking a power-hungry user — who is, in a sense, using a disproportionate share of network resources on the macro network — you're giving them better service through a femtocell,” said Tom Jasny, vice president of broadband and wireless services for Samsung Mobile.

Samsung teamed with Sprint to launch the first-of-its-kind Airave femtocell service last year in three U.S. markets. Other vendors, including Airvana, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, RadioFrame and Thomson, have jumped into the space, and operators have followed suit — some quietly, some publicly. T-Mobile recently announced it would try the femtocell market in Europe, and O2, strained by data traffic from the iPhone in the U.K., put out a request for proposal for femtocells.

But questions of standards and business models, along with the testing process, are making the femtocell space move a bit more slowly than anticipated, with predictions of rollouts leaning toward next year. Still, the potential noted by vendors and analysts remains, and in this time of rising power costs, operators may be looking for any reprieve they can get from any option — even a little box.

“For operators, as they're trying to squeeze out every extra half percentage point or quarter percentage point or every little bit of margin possible,” Jarich said, “I think that everything helps.”