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Dec. 11, 2008

AT&T says it has started testing residential femtocells, those small cellular base stations designed for home use.

Globally, as many as 26 wireless carriers have started to test them, and some analysts view femtocells as a growing segment of the wireless industry in the near future.

Sprint Nextel has already started selling femtocells to some of its customers in a limited commercial launch in December 2007.

Is AT&T a bit late in the game? Time will tell. Most wireless industry insiders don’t think femtocells will see much in the way of commercialized launches until the second quarter of 2009.

However, there is enough interest from mobile carriers in femtocells to heat up the market, even enough to create a little of hype around the technology.

The scope of the current testing at AT&T isn't known, although a city-sized test is due in the second quarter of 2009.

Customers on AT&T’s own discussion forum appear to desire such a service, which could potentially be part of a broadband wired modem or AT&T’s recently announced HomeManager system.

Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA are the only wireless carriers in the U.S. that currently offer some variant of a home gateway. Sprint calls its product Airave, while T-Mobile sells the HotSpot@Home device.

But home gateways do have some technical disadvantages. For example, connecting to emergency services can be a real challenge, experts explained in early August.

Overall, the market is also seeing some corporate investors. Cisco Systems acquired IP.Access in 2007 and Google invested in UbiQuisys this year.

Paul Callahan, v.p. of business development at Air-Vana says “there’s quite a bit of hype at the moment. There is also going to be many months of trial in 2009 and this will mean a lot of important changes for the mobile industry.”

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: AT&T.