Here’s Mobile Europe’s video of ip.access’ Femtocell Industry Award winning ‘virtual fridge notes’ demo, shown at last week’s Femtocells World Summit in London.
More Mobile Europe videos from the event can be found here.
Filed under: Demos | Tagged: Facebook, Femtocell, femtocells, ip.access, iPhone 3G virtual fridge notes | Leave a Comment »
Some brief notes on other announcements from last week…
Femtocell Industry Awards 2009
The winners of the Femto Forum’s inaugural Femtocell Industry Awards were announced at a dazzling gala dinner. ip.access picked up awards for the nano3G picocell / enterprise femtocell (in the design and technology innovation category) and for our Facebook virtual fridge notes demo (in the femtocell service category). Other award winners included NEC, Sprint, Cellcom, picoChip, SoftBank, and individual awards for Taka Yoshizawa and Chris Fenton.
ABI forecasts 366,000 picocells by 2013
ABI Research estimates that in 2013, there will have been cumulative deployments of about 366,000 picocells worldwide, representing 38% CAGR from 2008. ABI recently published separate reports on picocells and “super-femtocells”, with a higher forecast for the latter. However, in practice it’s not clear whether there is any distinction between picocells and super-femtocells.
Percello shows PRC6000
At the Femtocells World Summit, Percello demonstrated live calls on their PRC6000 chip using a Ubiquisys AP. Yoav Volloch (one of the industry’s great enthusiasts) took me up to the Percello demo suite, where the 16-user PRC6500 was also on display. Yoav showed me 8 simultaneous calls and HSDPA at 9.4 Mbps, with software for the demos provided by Node H.
Texas Instruments announced femto silicon
Texas Instruments has unveiled two new femtocell chipsets based on scaled down macro basestation DSPs. The new residential femto DSP is a dual-core processor that can support eight simultaneous users, while the enterprise femto architecture is a triple-core DSP supporting up to 32 simultaneous calls. Caroline Gabriel gives a great analysis here.
Ubiquisys has announced their G3 enterprise femtocell (i.e. picocell), based on Percello’s Aquilo PRC6000 chip. The G3 will support up to eight simultaneous users and HSPA+ data at 21.6 /5.7 Mbps. There will also be a future version supporting up to 16 users (based on the PRC6500 chip). Shipments of the G3 femtocell will start from Q4 2009.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: ABI, Airvana, Femtocell, Femtocell Industry Awards, femtocells, Huawei, IntelliNet, ip.access, Percello, TeliaSonera, Texas Instruments, Ubiquisys | Leave a Comment »
Femtocell applications & services
Femto Forum announces Services SIG
The Femto Forum has announced the creation of a Special Interest Group (SIG) with a mission to develop a framework that will simplify the creation and deployment of femtocell applications. The aim is to ensure application developers can use a common development environment to build femtocell services that work with any femtocell on any network. In order to achieve this, the Femto Forum recognises the need to work with existing standards bodies to incorporate femtocell APIs, rather than reinventing the wheel.
Fierce Wireless worries that such industry groups “have a track record of becoming political battlegrounds as rival vendors promote their solutions over those from other members”. But in this case the vendors in question don’t have any particular axe to grind. Our business is network infrastructure, not applications, and we will all benefit if compelling femto services create more demand from operators and consumers for our products.
Airvana, ip.access & Ubiquisys pledge support
As if to calm Fierce Wireless’ concerns, Airvana, ip.access and Ubiquisys have jointly pledged to support the Services SIG. The three companies have already begun working together to advance the goals of the SIG. This is genuine, folks.
Services demos at the Femtocell Applications Live event
One goal of the Services SIG is to promote the potential of femtocell applications and their significance to operators, application developers and consumers. The first initiative in this area was the Femtocell Applications Live event which took place as part of the Femtocells World Summit.
Nine vendors and one operator joined forces to demonstrate example applications illustrating the four key femtocell attributes which can be used to create or enhance applications:
Unstrung’s Michelle Donegan provides a great summary of the applications on show here, and Zahid Ghadialy gives an excellent blow-by-blow illustrated account of the whole event on his 3G and 4G Wireless Blog. Caroline Gabriel also gives a nice write-up at Rethink Wireless.
The Femtocell Applications Live event was even covered by Business Week, which latched onto the idea that femtocells might one day have app stores. What they didn’t pick up is that this is only the case for apps running on the femtocell AP itself. Femtocell apps running on handsets will be able to use existing app stores, and those running in the network will work on any handset without needing a download.
Not everyone was completely convinced. Dean Bubley suggests that applications must provide access for the entire user base, and will therefore need lots of ways of getting “at home” triggers, including femto-based presence, GPS, WiFi and network location APIs. Bill Ray at The Register was rather sceptical about the demos, and Duncan Geere accused one of being “delightfully insane” (which I suggest should be taken as a compliment).
But Ovum’s Jeremy Green was especially critical, commenting that “few of the applications demonstrated appear compelling or even useful”. Actually I think he’s wrong, but this misses the point. With the exception of Intrinsyc and Mobica (whose apps did seem compelling and useful to me), the rest of the companies demonstrating at the event were infrastructure vendors, not application developers. The demos were designed only to illustrate the potential of femtocells as a platform which can be used by real application developers to build much more compelling and useful applications.
Having said that, I am quite proud of the ip.access Facebook Virtual Fridge Notes application, which won the Femtocell Industry Award for best femtocell service. Our new iPhone application, shown for the first time at Femtocell Applications Live event, even displays the incoming reminder messages on a realistic-looking virtual fridge.
Filed under: Market updates | Leave a Comment »
Operator news from the Femtocells World Summit
It’s been a big week for femto news on the back of the Femtocells World Summit in London.
Vodafone announces UK consumer femto launch
Vodafone opened the Femtocells World Summit by announcing that the Vodafone Access Gateway will be available in the UK from 1st July. The device is a standalone 3G femtocell access point from Alcatel-Lucent and Sagem, which has already been tested over multiple ISPs’ broadband connections in trials with over 1000 users.
The Vodafone Access Gateway will initially be pitched as a simple solution for 3G coverage issues at home, and will be available on a variety of tariffs (including to pre-paid users):
| Femto AP price | Monthly fee | Included |
|
£0 |
£15 |
Femto AP Ericsson C510 3G phone 100 minutes & 500 SMS |
|
£0 |
£30 |
Femto AP HTC Magic (Android) handset 600 minutes & unlimited SMS |
|
£160 |
- |
Femto AP only |
|
- |
£5, £7, £10 |
Femto AP only (24, 18, 12 month contracts) |
|
Free of charge to subscribers on £60 per month tariffs |
||
Mobile Europe has an exclusive video interview with Lee McDougall, senior product marketing manager at Vodafone UK, who says femtocells will serve a small market (but he could hardly say otherwise without implying that Vodafone’s network offers poor coverage).
Here’s how the analysts have reacted to the news:
Mike Roberts (Informa): “This is huge for the femtocell industry. A launch by a major operator in tough economic times shows they’re convinced there’s a strong business case for femtocells.”
Matt Hatton (Analysys Mason): “Vodafone is pitching the initial price high to skim those subscribers desperate for better in-building coverage…I’m sceptical about the level of demand in Europe though, where in-building coverage tends to be good.”
Bill Ray (The Register): “This is very much the first step for Femtocells…but Vodafone’s announcement marks the start of wide scale deployments that could see a base station in every home with remarkable speed.”
Steven Hartley (Ovum): “…a femtocell offer that is an improvement on what has gone before, but still a relatively niche offering.”
Peter Jarich (Current Analysis): “The industry-at-large may be disappointed by this service’s failure to reflect the full potential of femtocells for lower-cost, homezone services and innovative applications, but this launch does a wonderful job of identifying a real consumer problem (poor indoor 3G coverage) and fixing it with a highly strategic Trojan horse of a product.”
Steve Shaw (on UMA today): “Of course, Orange has offered its Unique service, based on Wi-Fi, in the UK for some time now…Looks like it’s Game On! for FMC in the UK.”
Even the long-time femto sceptics at Total Telecom now believe that “the tide may be turning” (although, as in the past, their opinion is based on a rather slim survey – this time one person in the office.)
There has been a sense that femtocells were going to be slow to arrive in Europe, and Vodafone’s announcement should provide real impetus. It will be interesting to see whether it drives a competitive response from other European operators.
ATT on track for 2009 femtocell launch
AT&T’s executive director for radio access network delivery, Gordon Mansfield, told Unstrung “We’re on track for a full national launch by the end of 2009.” In the coming weeks, he said AT&T “will expand [their consumer trials] into a marketing trial of the 3G Microcell, which will be open to customers through our AT&T stores…in a handful of cities”. Mansfield confirmed that AT&T will launch with a standalone 3G femtocell, but is also looking at options for integrating femtocells into residential gateways.
T-Mobile International won’t be pushed into femto launch
T-Mobile International’s senior VP of radio networks engineering Klaus-Jürgen Krath told Unstrung, “We won’t be pushed by [Vodafone’s] announcement…There is not any firm launch plan that I can disclose now.” T-Mobile recently extended its femtocell trial in Germany and is using Huawei and Ubiquisys access points in some of its own retail shops.
Third time lucky for Orange?
Presenting at the Femtocells World Summit, Orange’s head of voice marketing Robert Swift said femtocells were Orange’s third attempt at an in-building solution for business customers. Following failures with UMA and 2G picocells from now-defunct vendor RadioFrame Networks (unfortunate choice), 3G femtocells are next up. Swift said Orange plans to launch femtocells in up to three key markets with two vendors involved.
“Femtocells are like crack…trial customers don’t want to give them back,” he commented. But despite this enthusiasm, Swift was cautious about the opportunity for femtocells, arguing that the business case works well for volume deployments but that technical challenges mean operators want to begin by “dipping a toe in”. He was also keen to point out that UMA, rather than residential femtocells, remains Orange’s strategic choice for the consumer market.
SFR worried about public health concerns
SFR’s director of network marketing Guillaume de Lavallade (another speaker at the Femtocells World Summit) said French consumers are concerned about potential health risks from cellular antennas and handsets. “You can explain that the emitted power of femtos is 10 times less than that of WiFi, comparable to a DECT phone, and that 3G handsets emit less power when connecting to the femto than on the macro network,” he says, but “it’s difficult for an operator to take those facts and figures to the consumer.”
Following common practice across the pond, CNET immediately labelled the Vodafone Access Gateway a “mini mobile phone tower”, which apparently goes down quite well with US consumers. However, this is unlikely to please European operators, who are generally much more concerned about media scare-mongers playing on the health issue.
The Femto Forum, GSMA and MMF have published a paper explaining the facts about femtocells and public health.
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: AT&T, Femtocell, femtocells, Orange, picocell, picocells, SFR, T-Mobile, Vodafone | Leave a Comment »
picoChip, Starent and Continuous Computing are set to show the world’s first demonstration of the new 3GPP Iu-h standard. picoChip is supplying the femtocell silicon and PHY software for the Access Point, Continuous Computing is supplying the femto software stacks for the AP and Starent is supplying the femto gateway. The demo will be shown at next week’s Femtocells World Summit in London.
ABI Research senior analyst Aditya Kaul says that a demonstration of interoperability at such an early stage in the standardisation process “indicates the level of commitment that the femtocell ecosystem has in working together.”
The demo is an important step towards real-world interoperability. Implementation of the R8 Iu-h radio standard is one of the key requirements for this. Another is OAM TR-196 compliance for provisioning and management. Also key to success will be the incorporation of real-world deployment experience in the evolution of the standard. Today’s pre-standard solutions, which offer advanced features to meet operator requirements that go beyond what is currently included in Iu-h, are being adapted to incorporate the evolving Iu-h standard without losing important functionality.
Wireless evangelist Nick Hunn sees femtocells offering a simple way for us to get large volumes of content on and off our mobile phones (e.g. onto PCs and other devices connected to the home network). This puts femtocells in direct competition with high-speed peer-to-peer technologies based on Bluetooth and WiFi or UWB.
Hunn believes the jury is still out on the question of whether anyone is interested: “high speed peer to peer, particularly if it involves learning a new interface, may be still-born”. But this is where femtocells come in – they make things simpler by not requiring a new interface. “If a femtocell makes something simple, users will ignore the alternative of Wi-Fi, which could remove the need for Wi-Fi in a handset,” says Hunn. “And there’s nothing else to keep Wi-Fi if an alternative, compelling download content interface and delivery mechanism appears. [Femtocells] feel like a technology far more open for technical and service evolution that peer-to-peer.”
Forecasts great and small…
Cellular News highlights a recent IDATE report forecasting that the femtocell market will generate € 875 million in revenues for Service Providers by 2013 from 9.7 million shipped units. Other predictions include:
IDATE’s Mathieu Limousi says the forecasts are quite conservative because “the added value a femtocell solution offers is too low in the eyes of end users,” and “femtocell mass market adoption conditions are not fulfilled yet.”
A more optimistic forecast was released by Juniper Research this week. Their figure for femtocell service revenues by 2014 is a whopping $9bn, with Access Point shipments reaching multi million unit quantities over the next two to three years. The report concludes that “femtocells are a winning strategy for Mobile Network Operators”.
Writing on the Juniper Research blog, the report’s author Howard Wilcox says that having a femtocell integrated with a home gateway, combined with attractive tariffs and femto services will make “subscribing to the femtocell service irresistible!”
Picocells & femtocells win GTB awards
ip.access and Blue Ocean Wireless have won a Global Telecom Business Innovation Award for wireless network infrastructure innovation. Blue Ocean’s global service uses ip.access nanoGSM picocells on commercial ships to provide on-board mobile phone connectivity to merchant seafarers.
Meanwhile, Huawei also won a Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for indoor residential services innovation, for StarHub’s femtocell project in Singapore.
More femto FUD
Following last week’s warnings from Epitiro, another test equipment vendor is playing up concerns about femtocell performance in real-world networks. Tektronix president Rich McBee says femtocells will be “exposed to external factors unforeseen by traditional network elements”. Of course, it’s just possible that he wants to highlight the significance of Tektronix’s new femtocell monitoring system.
Mobile data explosion – not just for smartphones
The GSMA has predicted that social networking will grow explosively over mobile networks, and this is borne out by figures published this week by INQ Mobile. INQ makes a low-end 3G handset for the 3 network in the UK. The figures show that INQ handset owners are aggressively using social networking applications, mobile email and instant messaging in a manner normally expected of smartphone owners. About 65% (455,000 INQ owners) use Facebook on their phone almost every day!
Femtocells – an enterprise “F word”
Andrew Mitchell says “femtocells” are battling it out with “FMC” for the title of most used “F word” in enterprise mobility. Femtocells appear to have the upper hand because “the femtocell platform provides the ability to extend a broad suite of enterprise applications over 4G networks…Unlike its FMC counterpart, the femtocell is not a point solution.”
Femto / pico – are we talking about the same thing?
Will Franks says it’s a false assumption that femtocells support fewer calls and have a shorter range than a picocell. He says “enterprise femtocells can range in capacity from 8-16+ users, and each one has a range approaching today’s picocells”. It seems to me that the long-range, 8-16+ channel enterprise femtocells that Will describes are, in fact, nothing other than today’s picocells – range and capacity (along with enterprise features) being precisely what makes them “pico” rather than “femto”.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Bewan, Continuous Computing, femtocells, GSMA, Huawei, ip.access, Iu-h, Node H, picocell, picocells, picoChip, Starent, TR-196, WiFi | Leave a Comment »
Sprint offers its femtocell to MVNO and cable partners
Sprint has announced that it will white-label its AIRAVE femtocell, enabling wholesale partners to offer their own branded CDMA femtocell services. This includes MVNOs (such as Virgin Mobile USA), as well as wireline and cable operators.
“The femtocell offering is not only a differentiator in the marketplace but is very compelling to those who want to get into the wireless business,” said Jim Patterson, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions.
Caroline Gabriel at Rethink Wireless says “Sprint is increasingly adding new incentives to its wholesale partners.” She believes that the greatest interest in the AIRAVE will come from wireline and cable partners because they own the broadband IP connections used to backhaul femtocell traffic.
Bernie Arnason at Telecompetitor says cable companies may be interested in the AIRAVE as a way to “maintain a telephony relationship with customers who decide they no longer need cable digital voice service,” and also as an option for targeting wireless only households who don’t need a traditional cable triple play.
Pivot, a previous attempt by Sprint to work closely with cable operators, was not a success. However, Kevin Fitchard at Telephony Online argues that Pivot lacked a true FMC element, which a femtocell would deliver. “A cable operator partnering with Sprint initially would resell the Sprint CDMA service inside and outside the home, but eventually such a partnership could result in a converged home-mobile line with a single number.”
As Mike Smith, director of marketing for Sprint Wholesale puts it, “We’re really just now on the forefront of understanding what femtocells can do for converged communications.”
Vodafone Qatar to deploy picocells and femtocells
New operator Vodafone Qatar is gearing up for full launch, but still needs a good solution for indoor coverage. After its rivals refused a request to share their existing indoor network infrastructure, Vodafone faces the costly task of building out its own indoor systems. The company has chosen to use picocells and femtocells as part of the plan, which should reduce the cost substantially compared to traditional approaches (see “Picocells Save You Money”).
Femtocell interference issues are solved, says Qualcomm
Operators need not be concerned about interference between femtocells if proper management techniques are implemented, claims Rasmus Hellberg, director of technical marketing with Qualcomm. ”We do not see interference as being a roadblock to deploying 3G femtocells,” he said.
Finnish mobile network operator, Elisa has begun upgrading its 900 MHz network to HSPA+. Some have speculated that refarming 900 MHz spectrum for 3G will reduce the need for femtocells, because 900 MHz frequencies penetrate buildings better than the current 2100 MHz frequencies used for 3G in Europe. However, in practice the two solutions largely address different needs – refarming allows operators to provide 3G coverage in rural areas without adding lots of new cell towers, whereas femtocells allow operators to add extra network capacity and give consumers their own personal 3G cells.
Furthermore, refarming 900 MHz spectrum requires the existing GSM voice traffic to be moved to higher frequencies (typically 1800 MHz), which will cause some holes in coverage, especially in buildings. 2G picocells can provide very cost-effective and targeted in-building coverage to patch these holes, thereby helping operators execute a refarming strategy.
Internet expands, mobile internet explodes
Cisco Systems forecasts that Internet traffic will increase fivefold over the next five years, driven in large part by video. Over the same period, Cisco says mobile data traffic will increase by 66 times, with video again being the fastest growing category.
Will the mobile networks be able to cope with this data explosion? Following last week’s warning from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that mobile operators are not ready for the deluge of data traffic generated by smartphones, this week test equipment company Epitiro has reported that UK mobile broadband performance is 75% slower than advertised. John Tanner notes that 3G operators are already relying on Wi-Fi to keep web-based apps from eating into their network capacity. For example, AT&T wouldn’t allow the SlingBox application onto its iPhone until it was configured to work over WiFi only, and not 3G.
But this isn’t a good state of affairs for the operators (or application developers, for that matter). Network upgrades are high on the agenda, including femtocells which will help offload indoor smartphone users from the macro network. Femtocell advocates believe that smartphone use will create demand for femtocells – not only operator demand (for network offload), but consumer demand as well (for a better data experience).
A few years ago we might have laughed if someone suggested we should buy a femtocell to improve the quality of mobile phone calls at home. Why would you want to make mobile calls in the house, when there’s a higher quality, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative in the fixed line? Now everyone agrees voice coverage is the most obvious opportunity for femtocells, with consumers up in arms if their mobile network doesn’t provide good voice service at home. For the femtocell enthusiast, it’s equally obvious that the same thing will become true for data, where the signal quality needs to be much better than for voice. Some are sceptical that consumers will be motivated to buy a femtocell to improve the data experience on their mobile phones at home – after all, don’t PCs and TVs provide a better, cheaper, ubiquitous alternative? Perhaps these sceptics have failed to spot that the majority of mobile data traffic is generated at home.
More on LTE femtocells
Femtocells are reported to be one of the hottest trends in LTE. This week, TMCnet’s Susan Campbell says, “Due to the fact that LTE requires roughly twice the number of base stations as a 3G environment, operators will need picocells and femtocells. Both options offer a cost-effective alternative to more expensive macro cell sites”. However, she goes on to say that planning the impact of femtocells on network capacity and performance presents a “tricky landscape to maneuver”.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: 900 MHz re-farming, Airave, Cisco, Elisa, Femtocell, femtocells, LTE, Qualcomm, Sprint, Vodafone Qatar | Leave a Comment »
Here’s how one Sprint subscriber calculates the value of his AIRAVE femtocell:
“It was costing us $32 per month for our unlimited long distance land line and it would cost us an additional $25 per month to have the AIRAVE. So we are saving $7 per month with the AIRAVE, with the added bonus of having great signal quality in our house.
“Now, that was just saving on the elimination of our land line if you have a large plan you may find that you don’t need as many minutes because you don’t use minutes when you are at your house… I don’t even know how much of a savings it would be if someone was still paying per minute on long distance.”
This ties in nicely with the Femto Forum’s recent business case work (updated this week). That “a savings” thing does bug me, though.
Femto Forum and WiMAX Forum to co-operate on femtocell standards
WiMAX operators looking to improve in-building coverage and data throughput are behind the newly announced collaboration between the WiMAX Forum and Femto Forum. The collaboration will create standards that address QoS, provisioning, authentication, power optimisation, mobility management and other areas.
Sensational headline raises femto concerns
It’s that old chestnut again. Test specialist Epitiro has found evidence that policy management techniques used by broadband services providers pose “a serious threat” to femtocell voice quality. Since Epitiro first presented this about a year ago, I have been diligently scouring the blogs to find evidence of this happening in the real world. I guess it’s still early days, but many people actually report that a femtocell gives better voice quality than the macro network.
ip.access demonstrates how picocells save money
A new white paper from ip.access explains how picocells are being used by operators around the world to save money. Drawing on real-world experience in over 40 mobile networks, the paper outlines seven different ways that picocells help operators reduce both the capital and operational costs of their networks.
Wireless infrastructure market growing despite recession
ABI Research forecasts worldwide capital expenditure on wireless infrastructure should grow by between 1.5% and 3.7% during 2010, despite the tough economic climate. Senior analyst Aditya Kaul says operators are looking at alternatives to traditional macro base-station deployments, including in-building wireless systems and femtocells.
Meanwhile, EJL Wireless Research says contracts for mobile basestations are down slightly from Q1 2008. According to EJL founder Earl Lum, “demand remains heavily concentrated in Asia Pacific while Eastern Europe was the second most active region”. 3G represented 53.2% of total contracts.
Ajit Jaokar ponders femto services
In his Open gardens blog, Ajit Jaokar says it’s “hard to sell capabilities of networks themselves (or for that matter to charge for networks)”. “Customers understand services,” he says, before going on to examine femtozone applications. Jaokar belies that femtocells could be a valid exception to the tenet that services should not, generally, be coupled to networks.
Femtocells address Shannon’s law
Kevin Fitchard takes a critical look at femtocells in his Telephony Online article. He acknowledges that “ultimately the only way to grow capacity will be through spectrum re-use, i.e. shrinking cells,” but questions whether femtocells are the answer. “Millions of cheap femtocells could replicate the coverage of thousands of base stations in a metro network and add untold amounts of cheap capacity to boot, but they would create a networking planning and management nightmare,” he claims. However, this overlooks a number of significant technology developments by the femtocell industry to address the management issue. According to Will Franks of Ubiquisys, these advances “effectively eliminate the risk of nightmares.”
PJ Louis also sees femtocells as a potential solution to the Shannon’s limit, but objects on different grounds to Fitchard. “The current underlying switching fabric cannot handle femtocell site deployment configuration I am describing,” he says. “Think 5 pounds of stuff being jammed into a 10 pound bag”. This is a new one on me, I must admit.
Are enterprise femtocells a good idea?
ADC’s VP product management John Spindler attacks the idea that multiple femtocells can be used to provide coverage in enterprises. “Rather than using multiple femtocells, a better way to approach the problem is to use the signal from one femtocell (or “super femto”) and distribute it throughout the office with a distributed antenna system,” he argues.
Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders has edited a new book on femtocells. ‘Femtocells: Opportunities and Challenges for Business and Technology’ is published by Wiley.
In other news…
Upcoming conferences
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Airave, Epitiro, Femto Forum, Femtocell, femtocells, ip.access, LTE, Percello, picocell, picocells, picoChip, Ubiquisys, WiMAX Forum | Leave a Comment »
Have we lost interest in 3G femtocells?
Last week’s press coverage from the LTE World Summit has caused some speculation that the industry has abandoned 3G femtocells. For example, IridiaBlog comments, “we have seen some announcements that would seem to point towards femtocells becoming part of LTE deployment rather than trying to make them an adjunct of existing networks”.
In fact, this is far from the case. As David Chambers comments, last week’s news should be interpreted as “vendors strongly marketing their products for LTE deployment, rather than any lack of progress or potential for 3G femtocells”. David goes on to point out “the primary argument is that massive increased data capacity can really only be delivered by very small cells – regardless of whether they are 3G or 4G – therefore femtocells should be used in both cases where very high capacity is required”.
Others see 3G as the obvious market for femtocells. A.D. Little analyst Karim Taga emailed his thoughts following the LTE World Summit. For Karim, “The whole point of a femto is to leverage the existing customer base using mobile handsets that can communicate with a femto access points without replacing or subsidizing new handsets” – in other words, 3G.
Applications will make femtocells “aspirational”
I’m not sure that Peter Jarich is serious about wanting an alert when his “wife / son / daughter sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night?”, but he does see genuine possibilities for using femtocells as more than just coverage and capacity extenders. “In the same way apps have turned smartphones from business tools to consumer must-haves, apps have the power to make femtocells aspirational,” says the Current Analysis VP. Many femtocell applications could be implemented using alternative approaches, but Jarich suggests that the femto-enabled versions will be simpler to configure and use, which is important for consumer adoption.
The Femto Forum’s Services SIG has been making good progress recently with John Cullen (ex-RadioFrame) at the helm. The SIG’s goal is to make it easy for application developers to exploit the femtocell platform for creating new services that work across different femtocells and networks.
Femtocells part of AT&T network upgrade strategy
Just as Opera Software was reporting a 295% increase in mobile data traffic over the last year (with US consumers viewing the most data-intensive web pages), AT&T has announced a package of network upgrades designed to stay ahead of the mobile data explosion.
CEO Randall Stephenson warned the wireless industry that operators are not prepared for the deluge of data that increased smartphone use will bring to their networks, and predicted that this would cause churn. “If you look at reasons for churn in our industry, the No. 1 reason is network quality,” he said.
AT&T’s plans include upgrading its 3G network to HSPA starting this year, with LTE rollouts to follow in 2011. Femtocells also feature on the carrier’s plans to drive its mobile broadband strategy forward. There’s some good discussion of AT&T’s plans here.
Femtocell frenzy at Mobile Business
Mobile Business magazine gives a round-up of the femto world with some wise words from the industry gurus. (And me.)
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: AT&T, Femtocell, femtocells, LTE, Opera | Leave a Comment »
Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders laid out the case for LTE femtocells at the LTE World Summit in Berlin. In a nutshell, maximising spectrum re-use they will ensure more users receive peak data rates more of the time, especially inside buildings. “By adopting femtocells operators can roll out a much better performing LTE network than they could with macro base stations alone and at a lower cost and with less risk,” said Saunders.
Current Analysis VP Peter Jarich concurs: “[With LTE] you need small cells. That could be femtocells, picocells or whatever,” he says. Unstrung chatted to executives from T-Mobile and Telenor at the same event, and found a generally positive response to the concept of LTE femtocells. According to picoChip’s Rupert Baines, the first femtocells in LTE networks won’t be deployed in the home environment, but at offices, coffee shops and airports and will compete with Wi-Fi based hotspots.
Dean Bubley is skeptical about LTE as a whole (notably issues with voice service and the business case), and hints that 3G femtocells may be a more sensible solution to the problem of heavy data users. “What’s certainly not obvious to me is that the 5% of heavy HSPA users suddenly become profitable if you give them LTE instead,” says Bubley. “Why not just give them a [HSPA] femtocell for use at home, implement strict caps, or just get rid of them entirely?”
But operators do seem rather keen on LTE, and Pyramid Research is forecasting that it will take only take four years for the technology to reach 100 million subscribers (two years quicker than UMTS). Caroline Gabriel provides a summary of the discussion at the LTE World Summit here, and Zahid Ghadialy provides a more detailed report here.
Motorola backs out of UMTS femtocell market
Unstrung reports that Motorola has stopped its UMTS femtocell product development, and plans to put its femto efforts into CDMA, WiMax and LTE instead. “With 3G, people are trying to bolt [femtocells] on to a mature, standardized network, and it just doesn’t work as well,” said Paul Steinberg, Motorola fellow and chief architect for home and networks mobility. However, ABI Research suspects the explanation is that Motorola has simply “missed the boat” with its UMTS femtocell offering, and Mobile Insider suggests that the company has made “a grave mistake”.
Picocells boost capacity at F1 Monaco Grand Prix
Monaco Telecom used nanoGSM® picocells from ip.access to boost network capacity in the press centre at this weekend’s F1 Monaco Grand Prix. The deal comes on the back of Monaco Telecom’s successful deployment of nanoGSM to service VIP’s, enterprises and hotels in the principality.
Alcatel-Lucent executive forecasts breakneck femto growth
Yannick Dupuch, director of femto product lines at Alcatel-Lucent, says he expects breakneck growth in femtocell equipment sales, with 5-10 million units shipping in 2010. He also said that Alcatel-Lucent is currently fulfilling femtocell equipment orders from over 20 carriers worldwide, and is looking to establish partnerships with Taiwanese ODMs.
Repeaters causing problems in Holland
The number of complaints about GSM repeaters grew significantly during the last six months in The Netherlands. According to a spokesman for Agentschap Telecom, improperly installed repeaters are causing failures on the mobile networks. Mobile operators usually refuse permission for repeater installations, but many are installed illegally.
Airtel offers in-flight service with AeroMobile
Bharti Airtel has partnered with AeroMobile to become the first Indian operator to offer in-flight GSM service to its customers. But the service is not yet available over Indian Air Space, and will work only in countries where regulatory approval has already been granted.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: AeroMobile, Airtel, Alcatel-Lucent, Femto Forum, Femtocell, femtocells, LTE, Monaco F1 Grand Prix, Motorola, picocell, picocells, picoChip, repeaters, T-Mobile, Telenor | Leave a Comment »
From the Tuesday 19 May edition of the Cambridge News (this is not a spoof!).
Filed under: Awards | Tagged: Femtocell, femtocells, ip.access, picocells, Steve Mallinosn | Leave a Comment »
The Femto Forum has announced the finalists for the inaugural Femtocell Industry Awards, which recognise outstanding achievement within, and contributions to, the femtocell industry. The winners will be announced at a gala awards dinner on 24th June 2009 at Femtocells World Summit in London.
The 8 award categories recognise successes in areas ranging from technology innovation and vision to progress in commercial deployment.
ip.access is shortlisted in two categories:
Chris Cox (ip.access’ Director of Marketing Programmes) is also nominated for an individual award recognising his work in coordinating the FemtoZone at Mobile World Congress.
Filed under: Awards | Tagged: Femto Forum, Femtocell, Femtocell Industry Awards, femtocells | Leave a Comment »
There’s not a huge mount of femtocell news this week, but there is quite a lot of news about WiFi, which is seen by many as the main competitor to femtocells for connecting mobile devices to the internet at home.
It’s official – WiFi doesn’t work!
An Ofcom-commissioned report has revealed numerous problems with WiFi performance in the UK. Interference from baby-listeners, TV-senders and the “Free Public WiFi” virus are slowing down connections. And in London there are just too many networks interfering with each other. Admin traffic fills 90% of the data frames sent over WiFi, with only 10% left over for user data. The report concludes that dealing with the interference from perfectly-legal AV transmitters and baby listeners is “a hard thing to do in unregulated spectrum” (but not a problem for femtocells, of course).
Verizon and Sprint launch MiFi “dongle dock”
Verizon and Sprint have announced that they will start selling Novatel’s MiFi device – a credit card sized router that creates a personal WiFi cloud for up to five WiFi-enabled devices and uses a mobile broadband network for Internet connection. Similar devices are being sold by T-Mobile and 3 in the UK. I guess the idea is that this will encourage subscribers to ditch their DSL connections and use mobile broadband instead. With the MiFi they can use WiFi-enabled devices like the iPod Touch, which otherwise could not benefit from a mobile broadband subscription.
Dean Bubley, who coined the term “dongle dock” for these devices, has pointed out that “this type of thing will only go further towards making the 3G networks congested”. 3G congestion is already giving mobile operators a headache, and with Verizon feeling the need to slash its EVDO overage charges for MiFi users, the dongle dock is unlikely to bring in additional profits to help solve the issue.
Elsewhere Orange UK reported a doubling of mobile data usage in the last 12 months (with music, videos, games and social networking the big draws), and AT&T had to defend its decision to ban Slingbox from its 3G network due to the application’s heavy bandwidth requirements. And although the US saw the world’s first $10 billion quarter of mobile data revenues, Informa principal analyst Nick Jotischky warned of a slowdown in data revenues reported by operators during the fourth quarter of 2008. This lethal combination of rapidly growing mobile data usage and slowing data revenues is a key driver of the business case for femtocells.
Think Femtocell has concluded that femto hand-in may be more important than operators have anticipated. The “lawnmower effect” is about the possibility of walking in and out of range of the femtocell during a call – not literally while pushing a lawnmower, but perhaps in the garden or a remote corner of a large house.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: 3, AT&T, Femtocell, femtocells, lawnmower effect, MiFi, Ofcom, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, WiFi | Leave a Comment »
Ericsson holds out on 3G femtocells
Ericsson SVP and head of business unit networks Johan Wibergh said this week, “we still don’t understand the business case for 3G femtocells”. Speaking after a Q&A session at Ericsson’s capital market day event, he told Unstrung that WiFi is the answer to the indoor data problem, and that Ericsson still has concerns about interference between femtocells and the macro network. Wibergh is apparently unconvinced by recent progress on the femtocell business case, interference management studies and the compelling case for 3G indoors. However, he did say that a 3G femtocell element could have a role in an Ericsson home gateway product for high-end customers.
Hand-in omitted from Release 8 femtocell standards
Think Femtocell notes that in-call handover from the macro network to a femtocell is not incorporated in the 3GPP Release 8 femtocell standard, which means that calls could potentially drop when entering the home. This is a challenging feature to implement, because a macro cell could potentially have hundreds or thousands of femtocell neighbours inside it, greatly exceeding the space allocated for a neighbour list. And femtocells can appear in the network anywhere and at any time, which means that manually updating neighbour lists is not practical anyway. Hand-in can be solved for closed-access femtocells by using the access control list to filter potential handover candidate femtocells (see ip.access’ Femtocell Handover issue note). However, as Think Femtocell points out, this will remain a differentiating “standards plus” feature even with Release 8 handsets.
Femtocell reference selling
Think Femtocell suggests that the relative invisibility of femtocells will prevent their spread through word of mouth references. Josh Adelson responds by proposing that the industry “might actually benefit from the femtocell as a device fading into the background”, being embedded into other home products.
While the femtocell Access Point itself might be hidden away in the home, femtocell services offer the potential for a highly visible (and viral) experience. For example, Intrinsyc and Ubiquisys this week unveiled an Android application that changes a phone’s user interface when it enters the home and detects the femtocell. The application, UX-Zone, switches themes and adds icons for high bandwidth services like video streaming and home network integration that take advantage of the fast low-cost data provided by the femtocell. Rethink Wireless points out that femtocell applications can benefit the operator as well as the consumer. “If heavy traffic like home video or photo upload can also be offloaded from the macro network, the cellco can even save money in the process.”
The Femto Forum and Avren events are jointly organising Femtocell Applications Live on Tuesday 23 June in London, which will bring together the latest examples of femtocell services from vendors and operators, and give insight into how these services will enhance the ‘digital home’ and enrich the experience of consumers in the future.
Squidoo looks at ways to improve cellphone reception at home
Repeaters, dual mode handsets and femtocells are all highlighted. (One of the comments is from a user that couldn’t get the Sprint AIRAVE femtocell working – a rare complaint about the device. Another user this week reports a minor AIRAVE glitch; apparently touchtone menus didn’t work on a conferencing service.)
NEC Europe’s new president takes pride in femtocells
NEC has appointed Nobuyuki Yanaginuma to the position of President and CEO of NEC Europe Ltd. Yanaginuma-san told the press “[NEC Europe] is proving itself a strong asset, with new technologies being developed on the ground, for example the Femtocell.”
Ubiquisys says femto grid can be self-installed
Ubiquisys says the main advantage of its self-organising femto grid is that it saves a truck roll for installation in business premises. It remains to be seen whether operators will prefer to take a more hands-on approach to the deployment of larger cells, whether constructed out of femtocell grids or single picocells. Femtocells and picocells may be clever enough to organise themselves, but they can’t reorganise the macro network without a certain amount of cell planning.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Airave, Ericsson, Femtocell, Femtocell Applications Live, femtocells, hand-in, Intrinsyc, NEC, Sprint, Squidoo, Ubiquisys | Leave a Comment »
Femtocells to be part of UQ Communications WiMAX service
UQ Communications is gearing up to launch a commercial mobile WiMAX service in Japan in July. Speaking at the WiMAX Forum Congress Asia event held in Singapore UQ president Takeshi Tanaka said “people are beginning to think that cellular internet is fake…the browser is limited, the content and performance are limited, and so are the screen sizes. This is our opportunity to differentiate from the 3G style.” UQ intends to deploy WiMAX femtocells as part of its network rollout. According to Tanaka, by the end of 2012 it will have deployed 38,000 base stations, including 19,000 femtocells.
2G femtocells for developing nations?
picoChip and Cambridge Consultants are claiming that their 2G femtocell reference design will enable low-cost basestations to be built for developing markets such as Africa and India. They don’t say explicitly whether the femtocell would be for home or office use, but the home market would be relatively inaccessible on account of the low penetration of residential broadband in emerging markets. So that leaves offices, where IP infrastructure is in reasonable shape in some parts of the developing world. 2G picocells are already being deployed extensively in these regions.
Strategy Analytics predicts that the majority of LTE deployments will use the 2,600 MHz frequency band. In addition to the argument that LTE needs small cells to scale network capacity (as discussed by TMC European Editor Bob Emmerson this week), the poor in-building coverage available with these high frequencies will increase the need for LTE femtocells. However, one-third of LTE deployments globally will use sub-1,000 MHz frequencies, including US deployments in the 700 MHz band.
Is privacy an issue for femtocells?
Over at Think Femtocell, David Chambers takes a look at the privacy issues raised by femtocells. In particular, a femtocell knows who is at home, and it also knows when people arrive at home, which opens up possibilities for application developers to create new services. The Femto Forum has an initiative in this area to encourage the development of innovative femtocell services, and Femto Forum members have developed a number of concept demos (see here for one example from ip.access).
The key privacy question is who has access to this presence information. It would clearly be hazardous if criminals could monitor when a house is unoccupied, for example. David points out some inherent safeguards, such as the fact that mobile phones register with a femtocell using their SIM card number (IMSI), not their phone number, so any monitoring of femtocells wouldn’t pickup the phone numbers themselves. However, ultimately the success of femtocell services requires the end user to be able to exercise strict control over which applications can access his or her presence information.
Some good discussion on the femtocell business case
Martin Jolette takes a detailed look at the recently published Femto Forum / Signals Research Group femtocell business case study, and raises questions about two aspects: the ability of femtocells to effect a reduction in churn; and the cannibalization of existing revenues by a homezone tariff. Josh Adelson replies with some comments on Martin’s blog, and Dave Nowicki makes a more detailed response here.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: business case, Cambridge Consultants, D-Link, Femtocell, femtocells, LTE, picoChip, UQ Communications | Leave a Comment »
Vodafone has been experimenting with outdoor deployment of LTE metro femtocells. The company’s head of new technologies and innovation Andy Dunkin says that the concept is strong, but requires a low cost solution for wireless backhaul at 50-100 Mbps.
Femtocells and the consumer electronics industry
Fierce Wireless wonders whether femtocells could bring the large consumer electronics companies into conflict with mobile operators. It’s all a question of whose brand goes on the box in the home. Fierce Wireless editor Paul Rasmussen says that “any attempts by the mobile community to enter the consumer femtocell market could be threatened by the emergence of well-known and accepted CE brands” – in other words, people might want to see their femtocells branded Sony or Toshiba (both of which recently joined the Femto Forum) rather than Vodafone or AT&T.
Providing evidence in support of the carrier branded model, 2Wire and Thomson (both of whom make white label CPE with the carrier’s brand on the box) this week reported an increase in their share of WiFi equipment sales at the expense of consumer brands such as Netgear. In practice the pattern emerging in the femtocell market is for joint branded products such as the Samsung / Sprint AIRAVE.
TeliaSonera re-launches UMA service
TeliaSonera has improved and re-launched its “Home Free” UMA service, including a homezone tariff option. However, analyst firm Ovum believes that Home Free will have “limited long-term impact” because of the inadequate choice of UMA handsets, and that femtocells are “likely to be a more viable solution”. In fact, TeliaSonera itself said a while ago that it plans to swap the underlying technology for Home Free from UMA over to femtocells at some point. According to Johan Wickman, senior VP for mobility R&D, “for Home Free, UMA is a first step – femtocells are the next step.”
UMA Today maintains an optimistic stance with the headline: “UMA dominates, reports Infonetics”. Digging further into the Infonetics report, a key finding is actually a significantly decreasing market share for UMA. In-Stat also recently reported that femtocells are set to dominate the market for in-building coverage.
If magicJack launches a femtocell I’ll eat my trousers
magicJack is a US VoIP service of somewhat dubious reputation. Its key innovation is a USB dongle with a jack for a regular fixed line phone. To make VoIP calls you plug the fixed line phone into the dongle and plug the dongle into an Internet connected PC. Simple. Now there are reports that magicJack is building a GSM femtocell into the dongle so that you can use a mobile phone instead of the fixed phone. Engadget and Think Femtocell express surprise at how this can be possible – for example, magicJack owns no spectrum and doesn’t have a mobile core network – but they stop short of saying this is nonsense. So I will say it. It’s complete nonsense. Whatever magicJack is planning to launch, it won’t be a femtocell.
Speaking at the Next Generation Networks conference in Bath this week, Analysys Mason analyst Terry Mason said that by 2015, 75% of mobile traffic will be generated indoors, and 95% of that traffic will be data. By then we’ll be seeing a 10x increase in traffic and a 7x fall in revenue per MB compared to 2008 levels.
The growing gap between mobile data volumes and revenues was highlighted in AT&T’s results reported this week. Despite a massive 1.6 million iPhone activations in the first quarter of 2009, for the first time in a long while AT&T reported less than 50% growth in data revenues.
Also speaking at the Bath conference, Qualcomm’s director of technical marketing Rasmus Hellberg suggested that the answer is to “bring transmitters closer to the user” by the introduction of operator-deployed picocells and user-deployed femtocells to give increased capacity and coverage. “Femtocells increase capacity 10X beyond what [HSPA+] technology alone could provide”, said Hellberg.
Airvana publishes its femtocell data performance study
Airvana has published details of its study comparing EVDO performance of femtocells with the macro network inside home. The research finds that on average the available broadband data rates with femtocells are over five-times better than with macro cells.
In other news…
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Airvana, Analysys Mason, AT&T, Femtocell, femtocells, magicJack, Qualcomm, Sony, TeliaSonera, Toshiba, UMA, Vodafone | Leave a Comment »
