An overview of the femtocell concept
Bell Labs Technical Journal - Next-Generation Wireline Access Networks
Deployment options for femtocells and their impact on existing macrocellular networks
Bell Labs Technical Journal - 4G Wireless Technologies
IEEE Communications Magazine
WiMAX femtocells: a perspective on network architecture, capacity, and coverage
IEEE Communications Magazine
Pricing and power control in a multicell wireless data network
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
On the pricing of femtocell services
Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Future Internet Technologies
Femtocell service provision with dual channel competition
Proceedings of the 24th International Teletraffic Congress
Entry and spectrum sharing scheme selection in femtocell communications markets
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
A survey of smart data pricing: Past proposals, current plans, and future trends
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
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Femtocells or home base stations are a proposed solution to the problem of degraded indoor service from the macrocell base station in future 4G data networks. In this paper, we study user incentives for the adoption of femtocells and their resulting impact on network operator revenues. We model a monopolist network operator who offers the option of macrocell access or macro+femtocell access to a population of users who possess linear valuations for the data throughput. We compare the revenues from two possible spectrum schemes for femtocell deployment; the split spectrum scheme, where femtocells and macrocells operate on different frequencies and do not interfere, and, the common spectrum scheme, where they operate on the same frequencies (partially or fully) and interfere. Our results suggest that the optimal pricing scheme always charges a higher price for the femtocell service, i.e., the operator does not offer any subsidies for adoption. Yet, at the optimal prices, almost full adoption of femtocells is achieved even for many common spectrum schemes that degrade macrocell capacity. Femtocell deployments provide huge revenue gains when macrocell capacities are low. However, in this range, even common spectrum schemes that heavily degrade the macrocell capacity perform comparably to the split spectrum scheme. Some common spectrum schemes with moderate macrocell degradation yield revenues comparable or higher than the split spectrum scheme at all levels of macrocell congestion.