With the growing demand for mobile data, cellular service operators are increasingly turning to small cells -- picocells, microcells, metrocells and femtocells -- to deal with the capacity crunch in dense urban areas and to add coverage in areas with low or zero cellular signal levels, such as indoors and in remote rural locations.

Every day in large and small offices across America, business workers ignore the PC or desk phone and grab their smartphones for convenient voice, email and Internet access. But delivering high quality cellular service inside office buildings is a challenge for wireless carriers, especially for high-speed data which requires a particularly strong signal.

Wi-Fi technology will play a big part of telcos’ plans to alleviate 3G network congestions as data demands grow exponentially, according to Ruckus Wireless sales manager, Carl Jefferys.

Femtocells will soon be able to improve home security, personal safety and help integrate smartphones with TVs, laptops and media players, in addition to improving cellular coverage in the home, ABI Research said on Monday.

The magicJack femtocell, a product unveiled to much excitement earlier this year, has not launched as expected during the second quarter, although the company says it will still become available this year.

The wholesale cost of a femtocell has dropped below US$100 and that will help give the sector a boost, femtocell vendor Ubiquisys said on Tuesday.

MagicJack is demonstrating a device near the International Consumer Electronics Show this week that it claims will let consumers make VoIP calls using any GSM phone.

The wireless industry has reached the limits of what it can do to use radio spectrum more efficiently and needs to move on to making networks more dense through tools such as femtocells, the cofounder and the current CEO of Qualcomm said Thursday.

Are you one of those unlucky souls who enjoys decent mobile phone reception when you're out and about, but can't get a signal at home or in the office? You're not alone. Indoor phone calls have long been a weak point of cellular coverage.