29% of operators to offer FD-LTE femtocell services by 2013

The top drivers for offering residential femtocell services are improving mobile broadband and voice within the home, and offloading data traffic from macro networks. Around 29 percent of operators plan to offer FD-LTE femtocell services by 2013, according to a study by Infonetics Research. WiFi, long seen as a competitor to the growth of femtocells in the home, is increasingly being viewed as complimentary by carriers. Service provider respondents project they will have, on average, 211,000 femtocell subscribers by 2013.

Operators are still very much focused on using femtocells to deliver better voice coverage, but the survey identifies a shift toward a more strategic utilization of femtocells for enhancing the mobile broadband experience and as a means for delivering value-added services like virtual home phone numbers and media file sharing.