Femtocells deployments have yet to start in Brazil due to a lack of required legislation. A proposed bill that would regulate small cells aimed at extending network coverage indoors is under public consultation until Jan. 25. However, while Brazilian telecom regulatory Anatel mulls the rules, Vivo, a unit of the Spanish group Telefónica, has conducted a pilot project to evaluate femtocell behavior and usage. The carrier expects to launch femtocells by the second quarter of this year.
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“There is a wide range of options for femtocell adoption, for consumer loyalty, quality enhancement or off-loading,” Leonardo Capdeville, director of planning and technology at Vivo, told RCR Wireless News.
According to Capdeville, Vivo will wait until Anatel releases the final bill that regulates the use of these small cells in the country to set up a final business model. “It will depend on how Anatel will regulate femtocells,” he said, adding that the carrier is already working on its business model, but it can be modified to meet regulatory requirements.
The pilot project included the trial of 100 femtocells deployed with users who expressed some kind of quality issue. About 80% of the cells were deployed in São Paulo. “This technology helps us to fill gaps where there are some coverage difficulties, such as more complex indoor environments or some higher floors of buildings,” Capdeville explained.
But he warned that “using femtocells isn’t a solution for all problems. It is one part [of a network] that also includes picocells and macrocells.”
For the trial, Vivo used Alcatel-Lucent’s femtocells; however, that does not mean the same vendor will be chosen for future deployments. Vivo plans to issue a request for proposal.
The contract between Alcatel-Lucent and Telefónica was made last June, when the French company announced it had closed a deal with the Spanish telecom group to provide femtocells throughout Europe and South America. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In August, Osvaldo di Campli, Alcatel-Lucent’s president of the Caribbean and Latin American region, said three femtocell contracts had been signed in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Di Campli also noted there were 10 metrocell trials in the CALA region, using both metrocell equipment for 3G and LTE in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay.
