ChinaTel, a holding company that is building wireless networks to launch fixed wireless broadband services in China and Peru, has its eye on small cells as a way to improve coverage. But the company hasn't considered using them to launch LBS.
"That's something we're not looking into yet, but if it makes sense and it's good for us, our ears are open to it," said Ryan Alvarez, vice president of strategic planning at ChinaTel.
ChinaTel, which holds a majority or near-majority stake in most of its holdings, will design, build and operate its networks while other stakeholders handle sales and marketing, Alvarez said.
ChinaTel engineers met with femtocell vendors regarding its project in Peru with partner Perusat, a Tier 2 wireline carrier. But the two network operators are nowhere near committing to the technology, he said.
"The huge catch to using femtocells that a lot of carriers don't realize is you have to make sure that the femtocell doesn't mess with your macro equipment because it can cause interference," Alvarez said. "We're very picky with what we do and who use … [so] we're very cautious of that."
Jude, of Stratecast, was skeptical that the mobile location-based services market today is "sufficiently robust to warrant or justify an investment" in small cells for that purpose alone. Handsets are also a long way from seamlessly handing off subscribers from cellular to Wi-Fi, making femtocells and picocells a better option for now, he said.
But small cells are usually cheap to deploy, which means carriers aren't opening themselves up to a huge risk by piloting the services in one or two locations, Jude said.
Cisco Systems is demonstrating location-based retail applications at Mobile World Congress this week with Deutsche Telekom, using Cisco's latest generation of outdoor 802.11n wireless access points (APs) and new Mobile Concierge Service Establishment Protocol (MSAP), according to Chris Kozup, a marketing director at Cisco.