The Femto Forum is highlighting research from Informa Telecoms & Media that indicates femtocell deployments have doubled in the last nine months.
According to Informa, several tier-one operators are deploying the technology using a variety of business models. It says there are currently 16 service commitments, including 13 confirmed commercial launches and several ongoing trials, while completed trials are now progressing into deployment plans for several mobile operators. This contrasts, it highlights, with eight femtocell service commitments and six commercial launches in November 2009.
"The femtocell market is experiencing maturity with many of the largest operators in Asia, North America and Europe now offering services," said Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
"Global operator demand for femtocells is undeniable and recent femtocell standards milestones can only enhance this situation further. As mobile data traffic continues to rocket, femtocells look set to become a vital component of next generation mobile broadband deployments and this is reflected in the increasing interest in enterprise, metropolitan and LTE models."
The commercially rollout of femtocell services in the past three months have included, Vodafone Spain, AT&T, Softbank and KDDI. In the States, AT&T has became the first operator to announce a nationwide 3G femtocell rollout.
Informa Telecoms & Media expects the femtocell market to "experience significant growth over the next few years", reaching almost 49 million femtocell access points (FAP) in the market by 2014, and 114 million mobile users accessing mobile networks through femtocells during that year. Femtocell unit sales are expected to reach 25 million in 2014 alone, it says.