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002.06.03
Regulatory aspects of femtocells v2
December 2013
Small Cell Forum accelerates small cell adoption to drive the wide-
scale adoption of small cells and accelerate the delivery of integrated
HetNets.
We are not a standards organization but partner with organizations that inform
and determine standards development. We are a carrier-led organization. This
means our operator members establish requirements that drive the activities
and outputs of our technical groups.
Today our members are driving solutions that include small cell/Wi-Fi
integration, SON evolution, virtualization of the small cell layer, driving mass
adoption via multi-operator neutral host, ensuring a common approach to
service APIs to drive commercialisation and the integration of small cells into
5G standards evolution.
The Small Cell Forum Release Program has now established business cases
and market drivers for all the main use cases, clarifying market needs and
addressing barriers to deployment for residential, enterprise and urban small
cells. The theme of Release 6 is Enterprise, with particular emphasis on real
world and vertical market deployments, and the role of neutral host solutions
to drive the mass adoption of small cells in business environments.
If you would like more information about Small Cell Forum or would
like to be included on our mailing list, please contact:
Email info@smallcellforum.org
Overall the paper highlights that while there are regulatory concerns surrounding
femtocells that most of these have been studied and found not to be an issue due to
the femtocell remaining under operator control and the strict authentication and
security mechanisms associated with femtocells. One potential area of regulatory
challenge highlighted is that of lawful intercept of traffic in Local IP Access (LIPA)
scenarios where femtocell traffic is not routed back into the operators core network.
Tables
Table 3-1 Femtocell Commercial services as of Q4 2012 (46 in 25 countries)........ 5
Figures
Figure 2-1 Typical Femtocell Deployment Scenario ............................................. 2
Figure 2-2 Different femtocell deployment applications ....................................... 4
This white paper has been produced by the Small Cell Forum on behalf of its members
to assist regulators who wish to understand the benefits and potential regulatory
issues associated with femtocells.
Femtocells are low-power access points, providing wireless voice and broadband
services to customers in homes, offices or even outdoors. A typical deployment
scenario is shown below.
The Small Cell Forum believes there are key attributes of femtocells, which distinguish
femtocells from other technologies.
Residential: Femtocells are installed indoors within the home by the end
user and may be stand-alone devices or integrated with other technology
such as residential gateways, delivering fixed-mobile convergence. Access to
the residential femtocell will often be closed - restricted to a specified group
of users but may also be open to all registered users in some cases.
Enterprise: Enterprise femtocell deployments are in small office/home office
situations, in branch offices or in large enterprise buildings. Femtocells for
this purpose typically support additional functionality than residential devices
such as handover between femtocells, integration with a Private Branch
Exchange (PBX) and local call routing. They are primarily used indoors, but
can also be used to serve a corporate campus. Installation is typically
managed by the carrier, but can be achieved by the enterprise itself or its IT
subcontractors. Access may be closed or open. Depending on the coverage
area of the access point the small cell may be better described as a picocell
than a femtocell.
Operator: A wide variety of applications where operators use femtocells to
solve specific coverage, capacity or service issues in both indoor and outdoor
environments. These are usually open access. They are installed by the
operator or by third parties under the operators direction. Examples of these
The latest list of operator commitments as at the end of 2012 is shown below. The full
Informa Telecoms and Media Small Cell Market Status December 2012 report is
available on the Small Cell Forums website.
The Small Cell Forum does not publish standards itself. However it acts as market
representation partners to 3GPP, 3GPP2 and WiMAX Forum, all of which are
standardising various forms of femtocells. We also have a cooperation agreement with
Broadband Forum which is standardising management protocols for femtocells,
starting with WCDMA [1].
A summary of status is provided below. It is notable that all of the major mobile
standards organisations have foreseen the need for femtocells to support future
mobile services and have worked actively to progress standards in a short time period.
A detailed overview of 3G femtocells standards is available in 044.01.01 Guidelines to
3G Standards www.scf.io/doc/044
Broadband Forum TR-196 Femto Access Point Service Data Model was
published in April 2009.
Issue 2 of TR-196 includes enhancements for LTE and CDMA2000 networks
and was published in November 2011. A new TR-262 was also issued
alongside this to define Femto Component Objects which captures generic
FAP status elements which might span multiple FAP services within the same
device.
The 3GPP2 formal publication of femtocell specifications was published during March
2010. The following list describes the technical specifications of the new standard:
The WiMAX Forum and the Femto Forum (now Small Cell Forum) announced the
publication of the first WiMAX femtocell standard during June 2010
(http://www.smallcellforum.org/newsstory-98-percent-of-mobile-operators-say-small-
cells-essential-for-future-of-networks).
The standard also incorporates support for three usage models to support different
deployment scenarios such as residential, enterprise and outdoor environments. The
Open Model allows the femtocell to operate like a normal WiMAX base station by
allowing anyone to use the service; Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) Closed allows a
In March 2011 the Small Cell Forum released their first services API which defines how
to create and write new mobile applications based on small cell technologies. In
February 2012 the Forum announced that it was working with Open Mobile Alliance to
develop a small cell services API based on this foundation API from the Forum.
4.6 Products
All major small cell infrastructure vendors are members of Small Cell Forum, with
products including femtocell access points, access gateways, security gateways,
dedicated integrated circuits and software. A full showcase of femtocell products is
available on the Small Cell Forum website (www.smallcellforum.org).
Femtocells create several opportunities to meet the objectives which regulators set out
to achieve. Some of these are as follows:
The Small Cell Forum is committed to working with its members and international
regulators to encourage a positive regulatory environment for femtocell deployments.
In particular, the Forums regulatory objectives are:
As a new technology, femtocells do raise questions as to the way they fit with existing
regulations. The Small Cell Forums members have considered these questions and in
general believe that very few changes, if any, to regulations are required. Indeed,
some environments may not need any changes at all. Some of the questions which
are commonly asked in this context are as follows:
One way of thinking about this is to consider that cellphones do not cause interference
problems when taken outside of the operators licensed market, because they are
prevented by the network from transmitting on unlicensed frequencies in that area.
Femtocells should not cause any greater concern, and for just the same reason.
http://www.smallcellforum.org/Files/File/SCF_Local_IP_Access_Regulatory_Request.pdf
Several national and international regulatory bodies have taken specific steps to clarify
issues of policy and regulation relating to femtocells.
In Japan, noting that there were several aspects of the existing regulations
which were not entirely aligned to femtocells, the Japanese regulators
conducted a series of consultations during 2008, and announced the outcome
in December 2008. The result was an amendment of relevant regulations
which allows end users to operate recovery and facility transfers of femtocell
base stations.
In June 2009 the UK communications regulator Ofcom provided clarity on its
approach to femtocell regulation [4]. It clarified that regulations on provision
of emergency call location and national roaming access to emergency calls
applied equally to femtocell users as to macrocell users. It also proposed to
vary the existing operator 3G licences to remove the requirement to keep
records of the location and technical details of femtocell equipment,
recognising that this may be impractical for a wide deployment of femtocells.
This clarity followed previous statements from Ofcom recognising the
potential significance of femtocells, such as [5]:
The regulatory working group of the Small Cell Forum would be pleased to respond to
further queries on regulatory aspects and to receive information relating to the
regulatory status of femtocells within particular administrations.
Contact details:
Email: regulation@smallcellforum.org
Web: www.smallcellforum.org
Postal: The Small Cell Forum
PO Box 23
GL11 5WA
UK