Nokia has another go at Femtocells

Finnish kit vendor Nokia has launched a new small cell product designed to boost indoor 5G coverage called Smart Node.

Remember Femtocells? They used to be a thing, right? The weird name was derived from the metric unit prefix denoting 10^-15, which is one order of magnitude smaller than ‘pico’ and two smaller than ‘nano’. In other words, very small indeed. It seems to have been chosen as a geeky way of subdividing the small cell category, almost daring someone to go to ‘atto’.

Well at least one kit vendor reckons there’s still some legs in the concept. Nokia has just launched the Smart Node, which it describes as ‘an all-in-one solution for premium 5G mobile indoor coverage’. Like the femtocells of yesteryear, it’s designed to offer a boost to indoor cellular signals, operating in much the way a wifi router does.

“These new additions to our femtocell range enhance our award-winning and industry-leading small cells portfolio which covers all use cases for both indoor and outdoor use,” said Giuseppe Targia, VP Mobile Networks Transport Business Unit at Nokia. “These compact and stylish units make it easy to benefit from superior indoor coverage and capacity particularly for home or small business use.”

One of the reasons femtocells aren’t spoken about much these days was their prior positioning as an extra subscribers were being asked to shell out for in order to compensate for their provider’s rubbish coverage. Nokia says this product ‘supports traffic management by reducing core network load and optimizing macro resource allocation,’ and that’s how operators should view the whole category, not as an additional cost for their customers to compensate for the deficiencies of mid-band 5G spectrum.

Look, a vid.