Femtocells: Softbank 'clarifies' strategy

Being one of the few major operators to publicly announce its plans to deploy femtocells to provide additional network capacity, Japan's Softbank Mobile is now attempting to bury this marketing message by claiming femtocells are purely about providing improved coverage.

The company's Chief Strategy Officer, Tetsuzo Matsumoto, has now confirmed its femtocells are nothing to do with increasing capacity on its HSPA network, and this objective can only be achieved in the longer term once the interference issue between femtocells and the macro network had been resolved. Matsumoto stated there were many potential solutions to this interference problem, but a resolution was unlikely to appear within the next two to three years.

It would appear Softbank Mobile will continue with the deployment of its femtocells to provide additional coverage in rural areas and for business users--the company has come in for recent criticism over its network coverage when compared to its rivals in Japan.

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