Sprint begins nationwide femtocell rollout

Femtocells are a way for operators to fill in dead zones in the network in low-traffic areas as well as add additional capacity to an already built-out network, Jarich said. What’s more they require little capex investment and add only incremental opex costs since the customer is supplying the connection back to the network core, Jarich said. By charging a monthly fee just to have an active femtocell, Sprint is doubly advantaged: it makes money off of the subscription while saving network and operations costs, Jarich said.

“The value proposition is weighted much more heavily toward the operator that it's weighted toward the customer,” Jarich said.

Capex savings may be exactly what Sprint is after with the femto rollout. On Tuesday, Alcatel-Lucent recorded a huge loss primarily due to a fall-off in North American CDMA revenues, which Alcatel-Lucent attributed a single customer. While Alcatel-Lucent did not name that customer, analysts indicated the most likely operator was Sprint. Skyline Marketing Group president John Celentano said Sprint is not only facing financial and operational pressures, but it has shifted its capex focus to the upcoming launch of its 4G WiMAX network with joint venture partner Clearwire. That could mean Sprint is looking to scale back its network spend on the CDMA, Celentano said. Femtocells may be one means of achieving that, allowing it to grow the coverage and capacity incrementally without costly macro base station deployments.