A report from Informa Telecoms & Media has revealed that deployments of femtocells have more than doubled in the past 12 months. Most femtocells were supplied for residential use, although almost a third were in businesses - a dramatic increase from 12 months ago when the company recorded no non-residential deployments.
Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, said “While residential femtocell deployments continue to grow we are seeing changes in the market as a whole with operators realising the technology can extend to the enterprise, rural and urban markets. Enterprise offerings are rapidly becoming a standard component of all femtocell deployments. Beyond this, operators have already started to embrace urban femtocells to overcome the coverage challenge, and outdoor designs for rural markets which could also revolutionise developing markets too.”
Informa’s report says there are now 19 femtocell deployments globally compared with nine at Mobile World Congress 2010. It expects the femtocell market to reach almost 49 million femtocell access points in the market by 2014, with 114 million mobile users accessing mobile networks through femtocells during that year.