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Femtocells continue to lure mobile operators with their promise of a cost effective way to expand coverage, capacity and new mobile broadband applications. Mobilkom Austria, the mobile arm of Telekom Austria, is the latest European cellco to announce trials of the tiny base stations on its 3G network, hard on the heels of O2, Vodafone and other trailblazers. Like Orange in France, Mobilkom's initial interest is in improved indoor coverage, especially for businesses, which is also the focus on the world's first commercial deployment of (somewhat primitive) femtocells, at Sprint Nextel.

But the real benefits will be seen when the femtocell is integrated into other gear and used to support convergence, home or enterprise multimedia, and a host of new applications/tariff options. Operators in the US and Korea believe they will be moving to this second stage as early as late 2009, especially as the femtocell sector is now convincingly addressing the main operator fear about the technology, potential interference with other femtos and with macrocells.

Mobilkom's trial is another win for Huawei, which is getting aggressive about the femtocell technology, although its test deals with Telefonica and Vodafone in Spain, and StarHub in Singapore, have not yet turned into a commercial contract - though it will be keeping a close eye on reported plans for the Chinese cellcos to adopt femtos early into their 3G roll-outs. The Austrian carrier has installed femtos in 35 business and residential sites so far - supporting 16 users in the former and four users in homes. In a statement, Mobilkom said the project aimed to provide "quick and secure network indoor coverage to Austrian buildings that mobile technology can't effectively reach due to their particular architecture". It hopes to go commercial in the first half of 2009.

Apart from Sprint, whose Airave devices from Samsung do not support all the key characteristics of femtos, Japan's Softbank is set to be the first commercial deployer of the devices. Initially, it will focus on coverage, especially in rural areas, where it holds low frequency 3G spectrum. It believes it will be able to shift to urban convergence and capacity applications the following year when it believes interference and hand-off issues will have been addressed. Others may beat it to the post in using femtocells to expand mobile broadband services and capacity - AT&T aims to lead the pack in 3G, and WiMAX operators will also be looking to femtos to boost their greenfield networks as rapidly as possible. Comcast, part of the Clearwire partnership, caused a stir when it announced its femtocell plans, and SKT of Korea said last week that it had designed a femto to improve indoor penetration for its Wi-Bro WiMAX-like network.

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