Femtocells poised to make impact after challenging year

In 2009, consumers flocked to the new smartphones hitting the market, and the world's wireless operators felt the pressure to upgrade their networks in response. 2010 will be the year that the carriers - and maybe even consumers - start placing orders for network-boosting products, investors and entrepreneurs say. And among the gizmos that will be in high demand are femtocells, the small base stations that boost coverage. Long a subject of debate in the telecom world, femtos are poised to become a household word, as some of the barriers to widespread deployment will fall away with the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. The price of consumer and enterprise femtocells has been just one of the factors delaying a widespread rollout, industry watchers say. The world's major carriers have taken longer than many anticipated to test out various network boosting products, like Wi-Fi, distributed-antenna systems and femtocells. "Operators were stalled testing the technology within their network," said Serge Pequeaux, chief executive of Dallas-based femto company AirWalk Communications Inc. Femtocells "did not take off in 2009 the way manufacturers ... expected it to. There were a lot of trials in 2009. But next year, we're going to see the numbers increase dramatically." Femtocells - a cousin technology to picocells and macrocells - are small boxes that function like miniature cell towers. The devices, also called access-point base stations, plug directly into the broadband connection in a home or business, ironing out glitches in coverage. Inside a femtocell is a system of chips and antennas that can rout voice and data traffic over the Internet rather than a carrier's main cell network. This capability makes femtos a good business proposition for the operators, who want to handle increasing amounts of traffic without building new towers.