Market update for weeks of 28 Apr & 5 May 2008

StarHub starts femto trial

The Singapore operator is about to start a 6-month consumer trial with 200 customers who take both post-paid mobile and residential broadband services from StarHub.

Telecom Italia Mobile interested in femtocells

Telecom Italia is very interested in deploying femtocells and is in trials with femtocell suppliers, but it wants the cost of femtocell units to come down. Luigi Licciardi (executive VP of TIM) says, “We think femtocell is…one of the most attractive solutions for our customers is to have a flat rate, a cheap rate, to use the mobile handset at home and femtocells can solve some problems like inside coverage.”

Nokia Siemens Networks partners with Pirelli

Pirelli Broadband Solutions is building femtocell technology into its home gateway products. A wide range of femto-enabled CPE models will integrate with NSN’s Femto Gateway. The announcement does not specify whether Pirelli is going it alone, or partnering with a specialist supplier for femtocell access point technology that integrates with the NSN gateway like its rivals Netgear and Thomson. NSN recently denied a rumour that it is looking to work directly with home CPE suppliers (supplying the femtocell CPE technology itself), but the story refused to go away last week.

In-Stat’s “Itty Bitty Basestation” forecast

In-Stat predicts that by 2012 shipments of femtocells, picocells and microcells will exceed 31 million units.

ABI says femtocells will boom in 2010

Analyst Stuart Carlaw says that femtocells will get off to slow start this year with around 100,000 units shipped, but will be booming by 2010, when shipments will likely total tens of millions.

picoChip is braced for the femtocell boom

picoChip says its biggest order to date is for 10,000 femto chips, but they expect femto shipments to overtake their WiMAX business next year. Here’s a video of picoChip’s HSDPA femtocell reference design demo.

26 million US households will cut the cord by 2012

Approximately 12 million households currently opt for a wireless-only phone connection, with that number expected to increase to about 26 million in 2012 (equal to about 22% of market share.) “The maturing of the younger, more tech-savvy demographic combined with emerging technologies (such as femtocell) set to improve wireless coverage and reduce costs, will further promote the position of wireless services,” says Ian Olgeirson, Senior Industry Analyst for SNL Kagan.

3G coverage in the UK

Vodafone estimates its 3G network covers more than 92% of the UK. O2 meanwhile has recently met the terms of its 3G licence in the UK by reaching 80% national coverage. “O2’s strategy has been to roll out our 3G network in areas where there is the most demand, providing high quality, in-building coverage in those areas,” said an O2 spokesman.

In other news…

And finally…

Three cheers!!! Exradia is dead! These cynical snake oil merchants were trying to sell mobile phone batteries supposedly designed to protect you from THE RAYS. It had been suggested that they might get away with this scam, but fortunately they didn’t.

Market update for week of 21 Apr 2008

Rumours about NSN building femtocells

A report from Taiwan suggested that Nokia Siemens Networks is planning to make its own femtocells with a Taiwanese manufacturing partner.  Up until now, NSN’s strategy has been to build a Femto Gateway that works with femtocell CPE from Airvana and others.  NSN denied that it’s strategy is changing, saying “In the course of our global business, NSN continuously evaluates its supply chain and operations across all areas.  However, our strategy for femtocells remains unchanged.”

Japanese ministry issues femtocell policy
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs & Communications has finalized its “handling policy” for femtocells.  Not sure of the details yet - will try to find out.  I wonder if they have removed the requirement for femtocells to be installed by qualified engineers.

Rumour that AT&T will deploy femtocells

The rumour was started by analysts from ThinkPanmure.  These guys have been consistently critical of AT&T for not adopting WiFi / UMA like its rival, T-Mobile.

New Infonetics femtocell report

A new Infonetics report says that femtocells could potentially allow mobile network operators to make significant reductions in investment in conventional 3G macrocellular networks.  It also says that the opportunity for 2G femtocells (mainly in developing countries) is not likely to be a booming market compared to 3G.

Telecom TV gives more details of Infonetics’ findings, and offers their own view: “We know putting in a femtocell probably isn’t as hard as laying a patio but it resides in the same DIY zone in the brain and might not fire up in a consistent way. So while there have been some significant mobile operator announcements around trialing and launching femtocell services to customers, the jury is still out: sweating, arguing but utterly deadlocked over all those known and unknown unknowns.”

Percello announces its femto chip

The PRC6000 chip will be used to produce low power, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA, and HSPA+ femtocells.  The first chips are expected to be available for mass production in 1H 2009.

OnAir to supply Shenzhen Airlines

The Chinese airline plans to make mobile phone calls possible on all of its flights before the end of 2009.  3 planes will be fitted with the OnAir system before this summer’s Olympics.

In other news…


Market update for week of 14 Apr 2008

Why do we need 4G femtocells?

This week’s LTE patent agreement amongst some of the major infrastructure suppliers has sparked some interest in 4G femtocells. LTE promises data rates of up to 120 Mbps per base station sector, shared between all users. In principle, LTE-enabled femtocells could offer the full speed to a single user, and there’s been some speculation that LTE networks will be deployed using femtocells and picocells initially, with the outdoor network being deployed later as a fill-in.

However, data rates would most likely be constrained by the user’s fixed broadband link which carries traffic to the mobile core network and the Internet. So is a 4G femtocell really necessary? A 3G femtocell will probably give you faster data rates at home than you can get outdoors on the 4G network, because you’re not sharing the bandwidth. And if your fixed broadband can’t go any faster, why do you need a 4G femto?

One reason could be that much of the data traffic flowing between your 4G femtocell and your handset is likely to come from your home network (music and video from a home media server, for instance), and will therefore not be subject to the broadband bottleneck.

Update: Simon Saunders has kindly pointed out that LTE is not 4G - in fact it’s 3G Long Term Evolution.  Simon says “I think the closest we have to a formal definition of 3G vs 4G is the ITU-R defnitions of IMT versus IMT-Advanced. For the latter, the 3GPP-family candidate will be LTE-Advanced, which has distinct requirements (and timescales) from LTE. (Peak data rates to 1Gbps DL, more frequency bands, non-contiguous spectrum operation etc, though it’s very early days…)”.  This also applies to the note below…

HSPA+ vs. LTE vs. WiMAX femtocells

According to a new study by Visant Strategies, HSPA+ will account for more than twice the subscribers as any other 4G alternative in 2014, as well as for half of all 4G femtocell subscribers that year. (Presumably the other half of the 4G femtocells will be LTE and a bit of WiMAX.)

The backhaul business case

According to this article, data volumes will soon dwarf traffic generated by voice, which consequently makes backhaul networks increasingly expensive to operate. Now Vodafone has followed T-Mobile’s lead in signing a deal to backhaul its basestation traffic via BT’s 21st Century Network, instead of running its own backhaul connections. But wouldn’t it be great for the mobile operators if they could get their customers to pay BT for their own backhaul traffic? So maybe if they could just persuade their customers to plug a basestation into their own BT broadband connection at home…

Who’s first?

According to Motorola VP Alan Lefkof, Europe is leading the way with femtocells. It’s certainly true that there’s a lot of trial activity and some serious operator intent in Europe, but I think the US carriers look perhaps more likely to deploy femtocells aggressively in the short term. The main reason is that the most basic femtocell proposition of all (i.e. “now you can actually use your cellphone at home”) appeals to 40% of the US population, whereas European operators see improved home coverage as a niche opportunity. On the other hand, maybe Japan will ramp up first. It’s a little known fact that Sprint’s Airave is not the only commercially available femtocell service. NTT DoCoMo also launched a femtocell in 2007 (despite the rather inconvenient regulatory hurdle that requires Japanese consumers to call in an engineer if they want to unplug their femtocell to do the hoovering).

Israeli expert calls for femtocells

One of Israel’s top telecommunications experts is calling on the Israeli Communications Ministry to adopt femtocell technology. Dan Rosen believes that femtocell technology can promote competition in the telecommunications market for less than $100 per unit. (Note that the article reports that 3 UK has deployed femtocells, but this is not actually the case. I wonder if they made up the rest of the story as well?)

HSL intends 2G+3G “femto”

Hay Systems says it will add 3G to its 2.5G “femtocell” (which, judging by the spec, is actually a picocell).

Skyworks congratulates Samsung on winning femto awards

OK, so ip.access has done a few industry award announcements, but I have to give our PR company credit for staying above this kind of thing. Fair play to Samsung for the award win (see 31 Mar market update), but is it really “news” that Skyworks said “congratulations”?

T-Mo US 3G / 4G

T-Mobile says it expects to launch 3G UMTS services in the summer. This article speculates that they could experiment with femtocells, as well as their WiFi / dual mode service.

Will T-Mobile US’s WiFi / dual mode strategy succeed?

Experts are sceptical that T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi strategy will find much traction beyond some niche applications. Roger Entner of IAG Research said T-Mobile has had little choice but to use Wi-Fi since it is so late to the 3G cellular game. “They are trying to turn a virtue out of necessity,” he said. “They’re forcing a technology to be used in a way that it was not designed to be used. Can they get to it to work? Yes, but it doesn’t work very elegantly.”

The University of Texas at Austin is working with T-Mobile to give better cellphone coverage on campus via WiFi. But William Green, director of networking for the University, is sceptical that T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi service could be as effective in a citywide deployment. “Wi-Fi networks are very hard to manage in dense environments” he said.

More over-optimism on UMA?

Following last week’s bullish FMC report from Infonetics, this Telecom TV article suggests that UMA is on the up because WiFi is appearing in more and more handsets. The point it overlooks is that most of these handsets, especially the most interesting ones like the Nokia N Series, don’t support UMA.

Objections to in-flight cellular calls in the US

Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio is determined to stop in-flight cellphone use in the US. There are some valid concerns, but Mr DeFazio has gone a bit over the top. Introducing his Hang-Up Act 2008, he talked about “the potential for problems on aircraft if 100 or more people start talking on cell phones” (suggesting that he understands neither the technology nor cellular traffic profiles). He likened his campaign to the battle to ban smoking from planes - “Only 20 or 30% of the passengers wanted it,” he said, “but all the airlines said they would be at a competitive disadvantage if they didn’t offer it.” Then he immediately undermined his argument by saying that “the cell phone phenomenon could be even stronger and more viral because more people use phones than ever smoked” - in other words more people want it.

Market update for week of 7 Apr 2008

Dell’Oro femto forecast

Dell’Oro Group forecasts that shipments of femtocells will grow from 170,000 in 2008 to 27.4 million in 2012 (an amazing 356% CAGR). Nearly all these femtocells will be W-CDMA-based. Femto revenues will rise from nearly $50 million in 2008 to over $2.7 billion in 2012. However, the growth will initially be slower than for wireless routers and other similar technologies due to higher costs.

Carl Weinschenk isn’t worried about the costs

“History says…that equipment costs go in one direction: down. If cost is the biggest issue, femtocells are on their way.”

Infonetics bullish on FMC

Infonetics Research says the worldwide FMC infrastructure equipment market grew 5-fold from 2006 to 2007, and forecasts another 10-fold growth between 2007 and 2011.

  • Dual mode cellular/WiFi phone market was $26.8B in 2007, and will nearly triple by 2011
  • Nokia leads by far in dual mode phones
  • UMA (+ VCC) subscribers will grow to 63.7 million in 2011
  • UMA network controller revenue will grow more than 10-fold from 2007 to 2011

Infonetics clearly believes in the future of UMA, but with the leading dual mode handset vendor saying recently that it might not build any more UMA phones, I wonder if things are a bit less certain than this.

Alternatively, will femtocells sweep WiFi?

Fierce Wireless believes that femtocells could be poised to sweep the fixed-mobile convergence battle out from under WiFi, now that Verizon and AT&T have both confirmed their interest.

Some utterly ridiculous femtocell scare mongering

According to Lord Toby Harris of the (UK) House of Lords science and technology committee, “The challenge these signal boosters will pose in terms of policing is going to be enormous”. The apparent problem is that femtocells allow the authorities to trace an internet criminal’s IP address as far as the base station, but finding the phone that connected to the device is much more difficult.

Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton points out that this is a generic problem that applies to all types of mobile internet access (i.e. it’s got nothing to do with femtocells). In fact, femtocells will make it much easier to trace the phone, because only a designated set of phones will be permitted access. But for some reason this was not enough to stop Computing from publishing their sensationalist headline. How ridiculous.

Femto demand from consumers?

Desperately uninformed comments, but most of these people seem to want a femtocell. Or is it “charging a fee for what should be free“?

Europe clears mobiles on aircraft

Following on from Ofcom’s recent decision, the European Commission has now cleared the use of mobile phones on planes above 3000 ft. Some FAQ here.

Those macro networks need some femto relief

It’s beginning to happen - near the bottom of this article, Lynette Luna reports that “HSPA technology is facing capacity problems in Korea as the popularity of video services is hurting voice quality.” Elsewhere the FT reports on the explosion of mobile broadband use.

And finally…

Attocells for real as software turns smartphones into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots.

Femtocells & bandwidth efficiency

Femtocells use residential broadband connections for backhaul. In many countries, the broadband link will be the bottleneck in the delivery of voice and data services to mobile handsets in the home.

Therefore it’s important that femtocells make the most efficient use of the bandwidth available on the IP link. In fact, this is much more important than has been widely recognised by the femtocell industry up until now.

Bandwidth required for voice calls

Broadband speeds vary from one country to another, but a “standard” 2 Mbps connection in the UK or USA, for example, delivers uplink bandwidth of around 200-240 kbps. In practice it will often be less than this (e.g. in DSL-connected homes that are located some distance from the local exchange).

ADSL downlink and uplink speeds in the UK

Many operators have stated a requirement for femtocells to support 4 simultaneous voice calls. This level of usage must therefore be possible within the available uplink bandwidth on a standard broadband connection. In practice this could mean significantly less than 200 kbps (not only because some homes will have a slower uplink, but also because the femtocell must share the broadband connection with PCs accessing the internet in the home).

ADSL bandwidth required for multiple voice calls

The IP bandwidth required for multiple voice calls depends on the approach taken to securing the user traffic. The table above compares the bandwidth requirements for multiple simultaneous calls using two different approaches to security: IPsec (assuming a standard Iu interface over the broadband link), and SRTP with multiplexing (muxing). Bandwidth requirements are shown for ADSL links using two widespread encapsulation techniques: PPP over ATM (PPPoA) – commonly used in Europe, and PPP over Ethernet over ATM (PPPoE) – commonly used in North America.

In North America, the Iu / IPsec approach requires more than 250 kbps for the third voice call. By contrast, SRTP with muxing supports 4 calls within only 127 kbps.

IPsec vs. SRTP – how security affects bandwidth

AMR codec samples are small (31 bytes or less), so the overhead from packet headers can be significant. IPsec is not optimised for carrying small packets. Furthermore, IPsec must be wrapped up inside UDP in order to survive Network Address Translation behind firewalls. The necessary headers increase the IPsec packet size to 124 bytes, which results in inefficient use of bandwidth.

By contrast, SRTP is optimised for real-time (latency-sensitive) applications such as voice calls and videoconferencing. Furthermore, by muxing a number of RTP-based voice streams into a single RTP stream, the IP packet overheads can be shared across multiple calls. This makes SRTP very bandwidth efficient.

Use of a standard Iu interface between the femtocell Access Point and the Femto Gateway precludes the possibility of muxing. A modification of the Iu interface that supports SRTP and muxing is therefore desirable because it enables much greater bandwidth efficiency on the IP link.

4 simultaneous calls – doing what it says on the box

It might be argued that more than 2 simultaneous calls on the femtocell will be a rare event, and therefore the likelihood of a bad experience is remote.

For example, assuming an average of 2.5 femtocell users per household, even if the peak hour voice traffic per user is very high (0.1 Erlangs), the probability of 3 or more calls happening at the same time is only 0.2%. So can we ignore the need for bandwidth efficiency?

The main argument against this is that the femtocell must support the advertised features. If it says “4 voice calls” on the box (as required by many operators), then 4 voice calls must be supported on a standard broadband connection. Ignoring the bandwidth requirement because of the low chance of 4 calls is not an option. If the advertised features cannot be supported (and a journalist is sure to check), then the service will quickly get a bad reputation.

Worse still, some households will have insufficient uplink bandwidth even for 2 calls (IPsec requires 170 kbps), so operators will need to restrict the marketing of femtocells only to those subscribers with a fast broadband connection at home. Restricting the market in this way damages the business case for deploying femtocells. It is also quite impractical; especially considering that actual bandwidth delivered by residential broadband services is often a lot less than the maximum speeds advertised, so consumers will not know whether their line meets the minimum standards required for a femtocell. Eligibility tests will add expense and complexity to the sales process, and there will be a high risk of complaints and product returns from customers in the “grey zone” between eligible and non-eligible.

How likely is a bad experience with fewer calls?

But alternatively the femtocell could be advertised as supporting “up to 4 calls depending on broadband speed”. This would set user expectations appropriately and might avoid complaints from customers with slow broadband. In this case, is bandwidth efficiency still an important consideration?

It turns out that bandwidth efficiency is still very important – the main reason being to reduce the probability of a bad experience with only 1 or 2 calls, especially if there is a conflict with PC internet usage in the home. For example, the PC requires uplink bandwidth to upload photos and videos to social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube. Even web browsing requires some uplink bandwidth to acknowledge the downlink packets.

So the probability of a “bad experience” must be defined broadly. On the one hand, phone users might have insufficient uplink bandwidth for voice calls. On the other, PC users might have insufficient uplink capacity for browsing and other internet services if voice calls consume all the uplink capacity.

Probability of 6 or more bad experiences in 18 months

The figure above shows the probability that a North American user will have 6 or more bad experiences within 18 months (which might represent a typical femtocell contract subscription period). Here IPsec does very badly indeed, with 40% chance of more than 6 bad experiences when the average peak hour voice traffic demand is 0.06 Erlangs per user. This number of issues is likely to cause significant churn. By contrast, SRTP performs much better, with a lower than 1.5% chance of 6 bad experiences. (Full details of the analysis can be found in the ip.access femtocell Issue Note, “Why femtocells must be bandwidth efficient”.)

Could things get even worse?

The analysis above may turn out to be quite conservative. Firstly, a poor experience on the femtocell may annoy users more than it does on the macro network because:

  • There is an expectation of fixed line quality in the home (especially if FMS is part of the femtocell consumer proposition).
  • Immediate call retry is less likely to succeed on a femtocell – the macro network supports more calls so there is a greater chance of another call ending.

Secondly, peak hour usage levels may be at the high end of the scale shown in the figures above. Based on analysis of fixed line usage and Fixed Mobile Substitution, 0.06 Erlangs peak demand per user seems a reasonable starting assumption (see Why femtocells must be bandwidth efficient). However, there are several factors which could increase this:

  • Femtocells will appeal to people who want to use their phones a lot.
  • Femtocell marketing propositions will encourage high levels of usage (e.g. free calls at home).
  • Femtocells will be used in small offices as well as homes; business usage is likely to be higher than residential, and intra-office calls will immediately use up two voice slots on the femtocell.

Thirdly, the analysis assumes an average value for the peak hour voice traffic demand, which may significantly underestimate the probability of a bad experience:

  • Some households will contain talkative families, who will need several calls at once far more often than the average.
  • There will be periods of much higher than average demand (e.g. Christmas, New Year…), when the probability of more than 2 calls will be much greater than normal.

Finally, the analysis ignores the possibility of mobile data traffic and video calls through the femtocell, which will further reduce the bandwidth available for voice calls and PC internet access.

Conclusion

Bandwidth efficiency is a much more important requirement than has been widely recognised by the femtocell industry up until now. Use of a standard Iu interface with IPsec security over the residential broadband link will cause user experience problems.

A modification to the Iu interface that allows the use of muxing and SRTP for security will lead to a substantial improvement in the end user experience, thereby greatly benefitting the femtocell industry.

Further details: Why femtocells must be bandwidth efficient

Market update for week of 31 Mar 2008

There was a lot of femto noise at CTIA this week in Las Vegas. With the exception of the ip.access / Sonus live demo, and one or two partnership announcements, most of the news was about CDMA femtocells…

Verizon to launch femtocells in 2008

“Our plans are to deploy femtocells in 2008,” said Verizon Wireless CTO, Tony Melone. He didn’t give many details, but he did say the company was gearing up for a full-fledged rollout - presumably in direct response to Sprint’s Airave femtocell and T-Mobile’s dual mode HotSpot@Home service. The story was also leaked earlier in the week.

Fierce Wireless commented that Verizon’s entry could “bring femtocell deployment to its tipping point in the US market … quickening the migration of customers from the wireline side of a large telco to the wireless side.”

Verizon is the big opportunity for the recently announced CDMA femtocell solutions from Motorola (with Airvana), Alcatel-Lucent (also with Airvana) and AirWalk - and of course Samsung, which has already deployed a 1X femtocell with Sprint. But Unstrung points out that CDMA femtocells might be a short-term solution as Verizon moves towards LTE.

ip.access & Sonus demo femtocell & picocell solutions at CTIA

Sonus and ip.access set up live calls through the Oyster 3G femtocell and the Sonus mobilEdge SIP/IP core network. In fact they called me at my desk in Cambridge from the booth in Las Vegas, and the call quality was great. Sonus also demonstrated mobilEdge working with ip.access nanoGSM picocells, including value added services for business customers such as “find-me-follow-me” and extension dialling.

Alcatel-Lucent Airvana partnership announced

“The CDMA femtocell solution envisioned by both companies combines Airvana’s radio access technology, including the femto access point and Femto Network Gateway services provided by the Universal Access Gateway (UAG), together with Alcatel-Lucent’s IMS core supporting CDMA-SIP convergence.” So it’s the Airvana RAN with the ALU core network.

Patricia Russo, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, mentioned femtocells in her CTIA interview with RCR Wireless.

More on the Motorola / Airvana CDMA femtocell solution

The solution will use Motorola’s NBBS device management system, but it’s not clearly stated whether the core network integration is via Airvana’s Universal Access Gateway or a Motorola Femto Network Gateway.

Daniel Moloney, executive VP of Motorola and president of the company’s Home & Networks Mobility business, mentioned femtocells in his CTIA interview with RCR Wireless.

AirWalk CEO talks up the CDMA femto opportunity

Sensationally, Serge Pequeux says that the Sprint Airave trial has been shut down and that AirWalk is well positioned to take over the business from Samsung. He also suggests CDMA femtocells will retail to consumers at a subsidised price of $200 per femtocell, and that Sprint and operators in Japan will pay as much as $400 per unit!

CTIA WIRELESS 2008 E-Tech Award winners announced

Samsung’s UbiCell won the Network Infrastructure - In-Building / Local Area Network Solution category in CTIA’s E-Tech awards.

More mainstream femto coverage from CTIA

There were articles on CNN Money and USA Today. End user responses on the USA Today site were not too encouraging - a typical example being “Why would I want to pay another $15/month when I’m already paying a fee for unlimited calling? The carrier’s network should be good enough that I don’t need this box. If not, I’ll switch to one that is.”

RadioFrame introduces OmniCell@Home and OmniCell@Work

The new femtocells will initially include 2G, expanding to a combined 2G/3G access point. It’s not easy to spot the difference between this and RFN’s CTIA announcement last year.

Orange France to deploy RadioFrame picocell

I think we heard this before as well - back in January. According to the new announcement, this is “expected to be the first mobile solution to be widely deployed specifically for enhanced coverage to smaller remote and inaccessible business locations in Europe”. OK, marketing spin is fair enough, but this is like announcing that mankind is about to make a first attempt to land on the moon. Surely they can’t be unaware that many European operators have been deploying picocells for enterprise coverage for years?

Rethink Research: Base Station Technology Forecast 2008 - 2012

Picocells and femtocells will account for almost 25% of operators spend on base station technology by the end of 2012.

New Unstrung report on femtocells in the US

Unstrung concludes that the main barrier to early deployments this year is cost. But it says that a deep subsidy on femtocells makes sense when it is cheaper than replacing customers and cheaper than replacing infrastructure.

More on mobile broadband driving the need for femtocells

Mobile broadband (i.e. laptops using HSDPA) is exploding. There are now more than 32 million connections worldwide, compared to 3 million a year ago. For operators this causes big concerns about capacity, both in mobile networks and backhaul, according to Informa’s Mark Newman. As the subscriber numbers increase, operators will have to upgrade networks, or users will see performance decrease and start to complain. This will drive demand for femtocells: “Sending data via base stations is a poor way of using capacity, if a majority of users are sitting at home,” said Newman.

O2’s Mike Short on femto - er, sorry - picocells

Asked by Fierce Wireless to comment on femtocells, O2 VP R&D Mike Short said “Some enterprise customers will say ‘Alright, we’ll buy a thousand cell phones from you, if you improve the coverage in our building.’ So along with selling the handsets and providing the connectivity, you have to improve the coverage as part of that.” That’s what picocells are used for all the time.

Lots of news from Tatara…

In-flight GSM update

Comcast, BitTorrent decide to play nice together

That potentially bodes well for future cooperation between femtocell operators and broadband providers.

And finally…

Thanks to Dean Bubley, James Middleton and Peter Judge for their blog responses to our “attocells” April Fool.

Attocells set to become the next big thing in wireless

Take your mobile phone signal with you, wherever you go
By now just about everyone has caught onto the idea of femtocells - mini access points that create a family-sized 3G cell at home. But what happens when you leave your home and there’s still no mobile signal? Enter the “attocell” - a tiny phone attachment that creates a person-sized 3G cell that you can carry around with you.

attocellPioneering cellular infrastructure companies have secretly been working on attocell technology for months, and the first prototypes are ready for testing. One of these companies is ip.access, which has developed a 3G attocell attachment for the iPhone based on its award-winning Oyster 3G femtocell technology. As well as creating its own cellular signal, the attocell has the added advantage of making the iPhone 3G capable.

The potential of attocells is huge, according to ip.access CEO Stephen Mallinson. “Where I live, there’s no mobile phone signal for miles around, except for a tiny patch at the corner of my bed,” he says. “With the attocell, I am no longer tethered to the bed, and can use my mobile phone anywhere in the house, the garden, or the entire village.”

Another big selling point is that subscribers will be able to open up their attocell to nearby mobile phone users who don’t have their own signal. Any calls made by these subscribers will be charged at slightly above the normal rate, and a credit will be generated automatically on the attocell owner’s phone bill.

Operators seeking to benefit from lower network costs can’t wait to get their hands on the new devices. “The business case is based on the fact that there will no longer be a need to build cell towers at all,” said Simone Saunter, Chairperson of the newly formed industry body the Atto Forum. “This could put the major network equipment companies out of business almost overnight.” Anti-mast campaigners should also be pleased because attocells have very short range and will have no effect outside a 1 metre radius.

But not everyone is convinced. Renowned industry sceptic Bean Dubley believes that there are still issues that need to be overcome before attocells can hit the market. “People will be confused about their bills,” he points out. “What if I make a call on the attocell and then the attachment falls off the phone and my call continues on the macro network? Will I still be billed at attocell rates?”

Nevertheless, research firm AIB is already predicting a massive market for attocells. “Most people will want one,” said principal analyst Carrot Stulaw. “The potential in the developing world alone is phenomenal. The barriers to starting up a cellphone network have been reduced to almost zero.”

ip.access says its attocells will be ready for mass production later this year.

Market update for week of 24 Mar 2008

Forbes says femtocells will cause mobile services price collapse

ForbesHidden in this otherwise reasonably good write-up is the somewhat bizarre claim that “…for carriers, femtocells are as scary a threat as free Wi-Fi”.

Apparently, because they “create a flood of additional capacity at very small cost” they could cause an industrywide price collapse.

Huh?

The Guardian on femtocells

“What would you say to having a mobile phone mast inside your house?” asks The Guardian. Despite the sensationalist opening, the article does go on to point out that health risks from phone masts are unproven, and that femtocells will, in fact, reduce emissions from mobile handsets.

I spotted yet another headline referring to femtocells as “a cellphone tower in your living room” in this interview with Airvana’s Paul Callahan. Paul gives the right response - “femtocells fall well within the emissions limits permitted by regulatory agencies for similar products such as wi-fi routers, baby monitors and the like. For further information, I suggest visiting the Femto Forum web site, in particular their publication ‘Femtocells and Health’.”

Airvana supplies CDMA femtocells to Motorola
Airvana has announced an OEM agreement to provide Motorola with a CDMA femtocell solution. According to one report, the solution is expected to be commercially available in Q4 2008. The architecture is reported to be based on IMS/SIP.

It’s not clear whether Motorola will provide any of the technology for the joint femtocell solution. Airvana says it has its own end-to-end system, including the femtocell Access Point, a Universal Access Gateway, and a management system. However, Airvana’s CTIA press release says the company is “working closely with [Motorola] to provide operators with femtocell and gateway technologies optimized to work with their existing core mobile network infrastructures”.

Both companies have alternative partners for UMTS femtocells. Airvana’s UMTS femto AP plugs into a Nokia Siemens Networks gateway, while Motorola provides a UMA gateway for Ubiquisys femtocells.

Airvana’s CDMA femtocell supports both 1xRTT and EV-DO. This is important because in CDMA2000 networks (unlike WCDMA) voice and high-speed data use different technologies, so femtocells need to support both. A recent Current Analysis report suggests this might make CDMA2000 femtocells $100 more expensive than their WCDMA counterparts, potentially putting operators like Verizon and Sprint at a disadvantage.

Femtocells according to Sonus Networks

In this “chalk and talk” presentation, Sonus Networks CTO Vikram Saksena explains how Femtocell technology benefits both carriers and customers. Cool format!

Incidentally, at CTIA Wireless (April 1-3 2008 in Las Vegas), Sonus will demonstrate their mobilEdge Access Node working with ip.access’ Oyster 3G femtocells and nanoGSM picocells (Central Exhibit Hall, Booth 3439). The demo includes live femtocell calls, and enterprise picocell applications such as Find-Me-Follow-Me and Extension Dialling services.

ADC will also be showing ip.access picocells at CTIA (Booth 1041) as part of its All IP-Radio Access Network portfolio.

New Unstrung Insider report on US femtocell market

Will femtocells encourage more US citizens to “cut the cord”? According to the FCC more than 15% have already done so. Unstrung points out that femtocells require a broadband connection, so there’s a silver lining for the wireline companies after all.

ABI forecasts in-building wireless systems to exceed $15 billion in 2013

The forecast includes active and passive Distributed Antenna Systems, repeaters, antennas, cabling, picocells and femtocells.

Ofcom approves in-flight GSM

plane_phone416.gif

Ofcom has approved the use of mobile phones on planes flying in European airspace. The decision comes out of a consultation exercise that began in October 2007. Judging by the (somewhat misinformed) end-user comment on some websites, people are concerned about the potential for phones on planes to cause Air Rage. It’s the disturbance of voice calls people are worried about, rather than SMS and data.  Qantas will allow in-flight SMS and e-mail on select domestic flights by the end of the year after a successful trial with AeroMobile.

Picocells and FMC

This article discusses why picocells (for enterprise) and femtocells (for home use) present a major benefit to carriers: “Picocells could be the most significant element in savings of wireless data costs yet devised.”

nano_gsm_handbook.jpgIt’s sometimes not appreciated that, while femtocells are new, picocells have been around for years already. In the past they’ve mostly been used a simple in-building coverage ‘band- aid’. But now they are increasingly being used as a cost-effective way to improve macro network capacity and performance (delaying the need for new macro basestations), and as a service quality differentiator to win business customers. ip.access’ Picocell Evolution white paper and Picocell Applications Handbook describe how picocells are being used today.

Market update for week of 17 Mar 2008

Ericsson maintains its resistance to 3G femtocells

This time Ericsson is saying that the chips are too expensive, so they won’t build a 3G femtocell before 2009. But analysts believe the real reason for Ericsson’s resistance is the fact that femtocells threaten the vendor’s core macro cellular infrastructure business. “Ericsson welcomes the femtocell about as much as IBM welcomed the PC,” says Heavy Reading senior analyst Patrick Donegan.

Why is Google interested in femtocells?

In the recently completed US 700 MHz spectrum auction, Google achieved its goal of enforcing open access on the C Block without having to buy a licence (Verizon eventually won the C Block at more than the $4.6 billion minimum required to trigger the open-access condition). Google was, apparently, delighted. So if Google doesn’t want to own spectrum and operate a network, why did they invest in Ubiquisys? The answer could have something to do with femtozone services. The value of Google’s mobile services could be enhanced if the apps become aware when the user is at home.

Femto noise expected at CTIA in Las Vegas next week

“While last year’s show was all about educating the market about femtocells, this year’s show should reveal some real products and concepts.”

AirWalk to introduce EdgePoint CDMA femto at CTIA

The EdgePoint femtocell combines a base station transceiver, base station controller, and network interfaces into a single unit, and can be configured for either 1xEV-DO Rev. A or 1xRTT. It has a range of about 250 feet.

Youngwoo Telecom Developed HSDPA Femtocell

Intriguing headline from Korea. Haven’t investigated further on account of the need to “Join Member first and get registered for paid subscription”, but I think this is a picture of the device.

Super-femtocells for enterprises

In-Stat has an interesting twist on the femto vs. pico debate for enterprises. They are sceptical about the idea of using multiple femtocells in an enterprise environment, but believe the cost of picocells needs to be reduced to enable wider enterprise deployment. Enter the “super femtocell”, which is basically a self-configuring picocell that can be purchased at an electronics store and installed by the end user.

ip.access wins another award
igawards_winner.pngip.access has been recognised with another award win - this time a UK Technology Innovation and Growth award from investment research firm Library House. The award is for UK spin-out of the year.

Why femtocells need to be bandwidth efficient

adsl-synch-speed-1.png

A Telco 2.0 study recently pointed out how many UK subscribers of 8 Mbps broadband actually get less than 1 Mbps in practice. Uplink speeds are typically a fraction of the downlink, creating a backhaul bottleneck for femtocells in the home. If the femtocell uses precious uplink bandwidth inefficiently, subscribers will have a why-femtocells-must-be-bandwidth-efficient.jpgpoor experience.

A recent ip.access Issue Note explores this issue further, explaining how the choice of femtocell architecture can have a dramatic effect on the end user experience.

Interestingly, the Telco 2.0 study also points out that 50% of Vodafone’s data traffic is transmitted from 10% of its cell sites, suggesting that capacity hotspots are becoming an issue for mobile data networks.

The ups & downs of UMA
Informa says the mixed messages from mobile operators about the success of early UMA services has left device vendors uncommitted. “The still-limited range of UMA handsets available, their poor battery life and their lack of support of 3G networks will continue to postpone the takeoff of UMA services.”

In-Flight Calling Launches on Emirates

Emirates airline says they’re the first commercial airline to allow in-flight calls (the recently launched Air France service currently offers only SMS and data). The AeroMobile system is powered by ip.access nanoGSM picocells.

Qantas also says it will introduce the AeroMobile service from the end of this year, but only for SMS and data.

WiMAX has indoor coverage issues

Australia’s Buzz Broadband has closed its WiMAX network, with the CEO labelling the technology as a “disaster”. Problems with indoor coverage were cited as one reason for the failure. Roll on WiMAX femtocells (but will there be any operators to sell them to?).

Market update for week of 10 Mar 2008

Softbank to launch femtocells in October

Softbank’s femtocell launch is being planned for October. Interestingly, they have been using in-home repeaters to test the concept, which suggests a basic coverage proposition - repeaters don’t provide any of the other, more interesting benefits that femtocells offer (private cell capacity for the home, homezone discounts, femtozone services…).

Softbank says it has architected its femtocell system around an IMS core, which again is interesting as most other operators have adopted Iu over IP. One remaining hurdle is that the Japanese regulator currently insists that only a qualified engineer can install a femtocell (despite the fact it’s no more complicated than switching on a kettle). Softbank is in negotiation to get this changed, allowing end users to install their own femtocells at home.

AT&T hints at femtocells

Commenting on AT&T’s “three screen initiative” (seamlessness mobility between your PC, mobile phone and laptop), senior vice president of consumer marketing, Michael Antieri, mentioned that AT&T is developing a single voice-plan that covers both mobile and home phone lines, and a single data plan for fixed and wireless broadband. Broadbandreports.com speculates that these bundles will be enabled by femtocells.

Femtocells in the International Herald & Tribune

The IHT reports a now familiar tale - massive uptake of data services (data traffic on T-Mobile’s high-speed wireless networks surged 61% in Q4) is driving demand for femtocells, which improve the quality of 3G mobile reception inside buildings.

Ericsson says wireless hotspots are doomed

“Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era,” according to Ericsson CMO Johan Bergendahl. At a conference in Stockholm he said that WiFi hotspots will no longer be needed as more people start using mobile broadband. This accords with comments this week from Matthias Reiss, Head of LTE for Nokia Siemens Networks, who said that mobile data will increase a hundredfold by 2015, by which point 70-90% of the world’s internet traffic will be handled via mobile connectivity.

Techworld and ZDNet both point out that indoor 3G coverage will need to get a lot better before this vision becomes a reality (cue 3G femtocells, which Ericsson has so far overlooked).

But operators are concerned about mobile data profitability

The other issue Ericsson and NSN glossed over is whether mobile operators can afford to carry this much data traffic. Speaking at a Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) meeting at the CeBIT technology fair in Germany, senior executives said flat-rate mobile-data tariffs meant usage was set to increase at a far greater rate than operator revenues. Therefore, they said, they would have to drive down the cost of providing mobile data connectivity if they were to continue to make money (cue femtocells again).

T-Mobile International CEO, Hamid Akhavan, said “We will see a complete decoupling of traffic and revenues. It is only a matter of time before we lose all profitability on mobile data.” He also said “the world doesn’t need any more cell sites”, and pointed towards femtocells as a potential solution. Hartmut Kremling, CTO of Vodafone Germany, agreed. “Site acquisition is more difficult these days. We need a technology based on existing density. Backhaul is already very challenging”. Lots more reasons for femtocells.

It’s not just Europe - mobile broadband use jumps 154 percent in US

The number of mobile devices accessing the internet via wireless broadband skyrocketed 154 percent in Q4 2007 compared with Q4 2006, according to research released by ComScore.

Informa comments on femtocells in its MWC roundup

“While 2007 was the year that the femtocell concept seeped into the consciousness of the mobile industry, 2008 will see the first operator trials. A number of operators have expressed interest in femtocells including Vodafone and Telefonica/O2 but there remains huge uncertainty about price and performance levels. France Telecom said retail prices would need to be below €100 for femtocells to be viable but some operators were being quoted wholesale prices of up to €300 in Barcelona. In terms of timing, operators expect that it could take 6-12 months to refine the software in femtocells and to address issues relating to interference.”

Forward Concepts publishes femtocell study

“Femtocells: The Emerging Solution for Fixed Mobile Convergence” concludes that…

  • Femtocells will predominantly address the post-paid cellular subscriber base. As a result, North America, Western Europe, Japan and Korea will be the largest markets for them.
  • Femtocells will capture the dominant Fixed Mobile Convergence market share by 2010, as UMA is deemed to be a transitional technology and cellular carriers will ultimately transition to IMS-enabled femtocells.
  • The most significant technical challenge for femtocell operators will be RF interference which will require proper frequency planning by the operators.
  • Global femtocell equipment revenues are forecast to grow at a CAGR of 126% from 2008 to $4.9 billion in 2012. Western Europe will be the largest market, driving 32% of the revenue followed by North America with a 22% share.
  • Femtocell integrated home gateway shipments are projected to exceed 23 million units in 2012, passing stand-alone femtocells for over half of the market.
  • Semiconductor revenue from both stand-alone and integrated home gateway femtocells will grow at a CAGR of 138% from 2008 exceeding $1.5 billion in 2012.

ABI reports on the Asian femtocell opportunity

A new study from ABI Research indicates that femtocells will generate revenue of nearly $5 million in 2008 from device shipments in the Asia-Pacific region. “While $5 million is a relatively modest sum in global terms, it is important to remember that it is generated from a market that barely exists yet, and as such it represents quite satisfactory early growth,” said ABI Research director Stuart Carlaw.

Regulatory complications may play a role in femtocells’ regional deployment too. The South Korean government has yet to finalize its fixed-mobile convergence policy, and ABI Research believes commercial femtocell services will not be introduced in the country until 2009. Femtocell prospects in India and China are heavily dependent on those countries’ 3G license developments.

Femtocells are girly crap

Interesting viewpoint.

Low power GSM back in fashion

Telco 2.0 review’s PMN’s enterprise proposition using low power GSM, powered by ip.access picocells. Elsewhere, Dean Bubley’s interest in low power GSM is reawakened.

Femtocells to be demo’d on the HSPA Mobile Broadband Pavilion at CTIA

Some of the demonstrations planned for the Pavilion include services that might be used “At Home” such as the “three-screen revolution,” using an HSPA femtocell to integrate the home IPTV experience with a mobile device and a PC.

In other news…