Bass Ackwards Cell Phone Coverage Focus

The majority of mobile usage now takes place indoors as opposed to outdoors and on the move.

A recent survey by ADC revealed that the majority of mobile use now takes place indoors as opposed to outdoors and on the move. The research showed that the biggest problem area for mobile service is in lifts and/or stairwells but there can be problems when users are located anywhere away from the building’s exterior/windows. Other areas participants found especially problematic included conference rooms (28.5 percent), ground floor/basement (24.9 percent), and even at their desk (22.3 percent).

This shows me that the operators assumptions about marketing, cell phone coverage, tower build-outs and services provided to their current customers is "bass ackwards".  If mobile phone users are truly using phones indoors 60% of the time more than outdoors than femtocells should eventually become the pillars of their business and not cell phone towers.  So we could safely assume that close to 70M people in the US and 1B people worldwide should be in the market to buy a femtocell in the next few years assuming Wi-Fi does not become the dominant connector.

The survey also revealed that 60.8 percent of users rely on their mobile for their job, while 38.5 percent stated that this was their primary work phone. However, almost two thirds of respondents also complained of less than perfect mobile service in their workplace, with 27.6 percent stating that their work has suffered due to poor reception. The survey covered 200 mobile phone users in September & October.