Ehsan Nourbakhsh’s Blog

In the recent years more and more wireless providers have started to provide femtocells to their customers. The customer can deploy the femtocell in any location that the coverage of normal towers are weak or absent.  Consider a product like Samsung’s Ubicell. The user can plug this femtocell in their home internet switch, and use their regular cell phone to connect to the final service provider, e.g. Sprint.

E-UTRAN architecture from 3GPP document 36.300-880

As of December 2008, 3GPP documentation for Long Term Evolution networks has started to mention Home eNB as part of the Evolved UTRAN. This move can be a significant advantage for the final users, only if service providers fully recognize the extent of service this final addition can offer. This recognition might require a careful study of 802.11a/b/g Access Points, considering the similarities of the two products. Both these products are the front end of a network to final customers. While these final points are accessible to the customers, the actual network is not controlled by them.

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