Femto cell and UMA

Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) providing local telephone access via Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/other unlicensed wireless link technology. (These are also referred to as uncoordinated cells - since they are not directly controlled by a macro/micro cellular operator.)

Being embraced by a number of major telecom operators: British Telecom, TeliaSonera, Orange/France Telecom, T-Mobile US, Netcom, and others.

Transcript

[slide46] There are also people building femtocells in something called UMA, unlicensed mobile access, where what they do is put in your home a small base station. So now your cell phone either uses their frequencies at low power or some other method or wireless LAN to talk between your handset and this base station, and then they backhaul it via the fixed network. Why is this such a great business? The young lady in the back corner. [student answers] Okay, let's say you're a big telephony operator, right? And you have a fixed telephony network, or fixed wired network, or fixed broadband customers, and you have a cellular network. And you have a customer, and they have their cell phone. Where are they most of their life? They're either at home or they're at work, right? Do I need a big wide area coverage cellular system to take care of that customer? No, why not? [student answers] That's right. Do I want to have a lot of cost? Does somebody else have that cost? Right, so in the UK, one of the big telephone companies, British Telecom, sold off their cellular telephony division and said, no, we're going to keep our cellular customers, but instead of running a big cellular network, we're going to support them by these local femtocells in their offices and at home. And when they go out of their home, yes, they can still use their cell phone. Why? Because we'll buy that service from someone else. A very interesting business decision. Now, of course, later they actually went back and bought another cellular company, but that's another matter. But this is a very, very interesting model, right? Because they kept the customer, but they weren't necessarily having to provide the area cellular service all themselves.