Femtocells are of great interest as a method to inexpensively
enhance existing cellular networks and take advantage of
inexpensive backhaul opportunities. However, managing all of
this uncoordinated and randomly placed infrastructure while
maintaining cellular customers' high expectations for coverage
and reliability is a daunting challenge. In this talk we
consider whether femtocells should be shared freely in an open
manner -- open access -- or configured to work only for a small
set of users -- closed access. Seemingly, the network operator
would prefer an open access deployment whereas the femtocell
owner would prefer closed access, in order to keep the
femtocell's capacity and backhaul to himself. We show
mathematically and through simulations that the reality is more
complicated for both parties, and that the best approach
depends heavily on whether the multiple access scheme is
orthogonal or non-orthogonal.