The use of Femtocells and Pico cells for LTE

There are some thoughts in the industry that LTE will change how networks are deployed. Network operators will leverage smaller cell sites in order to deliver the increased capacity of LTE and to increase indoor coverage. The primary challenge with increased pico cell deployment is the cost to backhaul the traffic to the core network. However, since many enterprise locations have Ethernet connections, there is the possibility of leveraging the Ethernet transport to an aggregation hub. This may work in urban areas but may be a challenge in other areas.

The challenge with femtocells in LTE is also the backhaul in addition to potential impact on the macro networks. Even though femtocells are supposed to be low power to prevent interference with the macro networks, more work needs to be done to ensure its effectiveness while diminishing potential interference issues. In addition, since LTE networks are supposed to deliver 5-6Mbps to the end user it may be throttled in most homes where the fixed line connection speed is less than 5-6Mbps.