Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Will Femto Cells Rule LTE?

A Light Reading article describes a picoChip presentation that femto cells will be used rather than macro cells for 4G LTE deployments. picoChip believes that the reduction in speeds that come at longer distances will require reducing cell radii in order to keep performance high. It states that its femto cell technology will solve this problem when used in place of macro cells.

This is an interesting minority position. The mobile operators seem to be adopting a macro cell LTE architecture. However, picoCell's point is a good one. The recent 3G iPhone experience is showing that there is low user tolerance for major variation in data performance across wireless networks.

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