Business Model for Femtocells: franchising for energy saving

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to analyze how business models are employed in mobile communications, to tune them to the Femtocell domain, and to study alternative goals that can be reached by looking at business model in an alternative way.
Design/methodology/approach – By analyzing the technologies directly linked to a business model is possible to produce a tassonomy of their usage. An analysis of the value chain is used to understand how to innovate current approaches to achieve alternative goals.
Findings – The article covers the perspective that mobile networks evolution and femtocell implementation on mobile market can bring innovative services to the final user, by leveraging on alternative usage of business models.
Research limitations/implications – The acceptance by mobile operators of usage of particular business models, can bring benefits to the final users in the form of innovative services. An example of these services is the implementation of techniques to save energy on the terminal side.
Practical implications – As soon as the technologies targeted by the paper will be mature, it will be possible to provide novel services to the final user, while increasing the operating and business benefits for the mobile operators.
Originality/Value – A novel view on the current application of business model is developed, and alternative goals are shown to be achievable, by novel approaches, or by traditional approaches applied in an innovative way.