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Carriers may be looking to invest their way out of recession, but they will still be under intense commercial and shareholder pressure to enhance their networks at the lowest possible cost. One option that was not available to 3G carriers building out at the start of the decade is the femtocell, the tiny indoor base station that could reduce overall RAN deployment costs and allow operators to target WiMAX or LTE roll-out at specific high value target bases, as well as supporting new, lucrative services and price plans.

The femtocell is set to play a major role in the expansion of US 3G and 4G. The Clearwire cablecos are expected to have access to a dedicated portion of the venture's spectrum in which to run femtocell-based services, enabling them to differentiate their offerings, tariffs and brands within the shared RAN environment.

Sprint Nextel already has the world's first commercial femtocell on the market, in the shape of the Samsung Airave for CDMA (admittedly a fairly basic interpretation of the femto concept, mainly geared to improving indoor voice coverage).

On the 3G/LTE front, AT&T revealed plans earlier this year to deploy femtocells on a wide scale from late 2009, working with Cisco on a deal for 7m units reported to be worth about $500m (Cisco has a stake in UK-based femtocell specialist ip.access, assumed to be its partner in this project).

And now Verizon is following suit, telling reporters at Unstrung that it could introduce its first femto-based offering early next year, hard on the heels of Japan's Softbank, which is boasting that it will be the first major carrier to market with HSPA femtos. "We are looking at femtocell technology and will soon be performing user tests," said a Verizon Wireless spokesperson. "We could well have a product on the market early next year, but we have made no public announcements about that yet."

With the equipment choices for CDMA more limited than for HSPA or WiMAX, it seems that Verizon will go with Samsung, like rival Sprint. A Samsung Ubicell device - also the basis of Sprint Airave - with a Verizon logo is said to be awaiting approval by the FCC. Another femto vendor targeting CDMA is Airvana, which has yet to announce a carrier deal publicly.

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