When we take a look at the Mobile Market we see that it has reached a growth peak in most of the industrialized world. This market is what we would call “saturated” now with some countries like Germany, Austria and Italy and boasting 130% mobile subscriber penetration. Most of this “more than 100%” comes from secondary SIMs for Data Services. Clearly the Mobile Providers need to come up with new revenue streams if they want to grow.
In some conversations with mobile providers recently I have heard about a new potential Enterprise market for the Mobile providers. New technology startups such as Ubiquisys are pioneering a technology called Femtocell Technology that would allow for a converged Mobile and Data service inside the Enterprise. More technical Femtocell information can be found here.
The basic idea is to install small wireless base-stations called Femtocells that allow mobile coverage for voice and data services across a common wireless network in an Enterprise. Femtocell base stations also have the ability to peer with each other allowing the network to grow or shrink as required (think SoHo size to full Campus coverage). These base stations would converge to a gateway that would carry any traffic bound for somewhere outside of the Femtocell network on a wired service such as DSL, TDM or some type of Fiber based facility.
Femtocell technology has been talked about for quite some time and some carriers like AT&T and Verizon in the states have been using it as a way to capture more Small Office subscribers but I have yet to see a Mobile Carrier define a strategy to use this as a way to converge communications for the larger Enterprise.
With some savvy Productization this could be come the way that Mobile Providers become strategic communications providers in the Enterprise.
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