North American CDMA carriers to launch commercial femtocells in 2008
Tom Jasny, Samsung VP of wireless and broadband networks, was bullish about femtocell prospects in comments made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. He says Samsung has completed trials with several North American CDMA operators, and expects nationwide rollouts within the year. He also believes that Samsung has a time-to-market advantage by building an end-to-end system. This contrasts with other large vendors who are partnering to create a complete solution (e.g. NSN, Motorola and NEC). Jasny also rejected the idea that lack of standards will hold up the femto market, a theme picked up eloquently in Carl Weinschenk’s blog (see below).
Are femtocell standards necessary before commercial launches?
Carl Weinschenk says, “Vendors aren’t politely waiting for the standards process to work its way through… the promise of femtocells is so great that the ‘you snooze, you lose’ theory takes over”. He also suggests that “the very nature of standards is changing… standards may be more of a long-term set of ground rules that don’t necessarily have to exist when the technology is first being developed and introduced”.
Other femto news from CES
Suraj Shetty, senior director of worldwide service provider marketing at Cisco, says the company is “keeping an eye on the femtocell home base-station market”.
Samsung’s Airave femtocell features in this video report from the CES show by TechRepublic. The Samsung chap describes femtocells as “a private cell tower in your house”. Maybe this goes down OK in America (I saw a similar description used here and here). But I think it would be advisable for the vendor community to adopt terminology less likely to spook the general public unnecessarily (such as the Femto Forum’s “low-power wireless access points“).
In another departure from the Femto Forum definition, Panasonic was apparently displaying a “Bluetooth femtocell” at CES
. It’s hard to figure out what this device does, but it’s certainly not a femtocell.
A picture of ip.access’ Oyster 3G femtocell featured in one CES report. We weren’t at the show, but the Oyster was on display on a partner’s exhibition stand.
New funding for femto vendors
Airwalk has raised a $25 million B round of funding for its femtocell programme. Meanwhile, RadioFrame is attempting to raise a $30 million F round (wow, 6 rounds!). They’ve got $8.37 million so far in this round, adding to $78 million raised in previous rounds since 2001.
Airvana deal pending with home gateway vendor
Airvana says it’s about to announce a deal with a leading European vendor of home gateways to embed its femtocell technology. Am I missing something? Can it be news that you’re “about to announce some news”? Anyway, I know who it is but I won’t spoil the surprise.
Femto caution on Telecoms.com
Gareth Willmer, editor of Mobile Communications Europe, is cautious about femtocells, mirroring recent comments by Analysys and others. One key point that’s becoming very relevant now the industry is starting market trials is that “a poorly executed launch by one operator could weaken consumer confidence in the technology”. Go Sprint!
Airvana partners with Motive
Airvana has announced that its femtocell management system will be based on Motive Inc’s Home Device Manager solution. This follows a similar partnership announcement by Ubiquisys in December.
Femtocells make into Silicon.com’s “five mobile trends for 2008″
That’s good, then, isn’t it.
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: Airvana, Airwalk, Cisco, Femtocell, femtocells, ip.access, Panasonic, RadioFrame, samsung, Ubiquisys
