Our news received a lot of coverage this week (see below for a partial listing). Heavy Reading’s Gabriel Brown thinks that Qualcomm has made a good investment choice – “ip.access is one of the best femtocell plays because they’re one of the few companies that has real-world experience with small base stations backhauled over IP.”
There was some entertaining speculation about Qualcomm’s motivation. GigaOM notes that Qualcomm has previously highlighted potential problems with femtocell interference, and suggests that with the ip.access investment “perhaps Qualcomm intends to solve those problems and reap the rewards of a growing market.” Electronics Weekly wonders if Qualcomm invested in ip.access to ward off a Cisco acquisition, and Dean Bubley links the investment to Qualcomm’s recent L-band spectrum win in the UK (widely assumed to be a means for Qualcomm to introduce its mobile TV standard, MediaFLO to Europe). Dean considers the possibilities of introducing a MediaFLO chip into a femtocell.
Here’s a selection of the coverage:
Financial Times, The Guardian, Business Week, Reuters, CNN Money / Dow Jones, A week in wireless, The Register, Telecoms.com, Ovum, RCR Wireless News, Fierce Wireless, Fierce Broadband Wireless, Total Telecom, Mobile Europe, GSMA briefing, Silicon.com, Computer Weekly, Telephony online, Strategy Eye, GigaOM, Disruptive Analysis, EE Times, Electronics Weekly
Femto Forum members see eye-to-eye on femto standards
A lot of progress has been made in recent weeks (both in 3GPP and at the Femto Forum) towards standardising the interface between the femtocell access point and the core network. The Femto Forum this week reported consensus on the use of a modified Iu interface, and several options for transport control protocols are currently being considered. Some operators are pushing hard to reach agreement on a single interface in time for 3GPP Release 8 (which effectively means December 08 at the latest).
Of the four “classic” femtocell integration options (here’s another white paper on this topic published this week), Iu-b looks dead, IMS is seen as a future roadmap item rather than an option for the initial standard, UMA/GAN is no longer being promoted, leaving Iu over IP as the clear winner. But which version of Iu over IP? In an interview with Telecoms.com, Femto Forum Chairman Simon Saunders says the solution will “build on available and recognized industry standards as well as synthesising existing solutions to create a best of breed technology”. This means it’s likely that all vendors will need to migrate their existing solutions towards the new modified Iu standard.
picoChip targets LTE picocells & femtocells
picoChip has announced two new reference designs – the PC8608 Home eNode B (LTE femtocell) and PC8618 eNode B (LTE picocell). The designs were developed together with partners mimoOn and Wintegra. Both products can be combined with picoChip’s HSPA products and run on the same hardware platform as the company’s WiMAX reference designs.
picoChip also won the Best of WiMAX World EMEA 2008 Industry Innovation Award this week for its PC6530 WiMAX femtocell reference design.
In-building wireless market set to explode
In a new report, ABI says in-building wireless system deployments will reach 500,000+ buildings through 2013.
VoIP industry veteran Jeff Pulver has bought a dual mode BlackBerry Curve and a subscription to T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home UMA service. He likes it, and can’t see why he’d want a femtocell.
Aruba Networks also prefers WiFi
A new white paper by WiFi infrastructure vendor Aruba Networks explores “whether the femtocell is a technology in search of an application, or ripe for growth but just slightly ahead of the curve.” Peter Thornycroft, author of the white paper says that although femtocells and WiFi are often considered competing solutions, “there are synergies when the two are used together,” but he believes that femtocells are currently too expensive.
FMCA analyses success of converged services
The Fixed Mobile Convergence Alliance has issued a new white paper which categorises over 400 examples of converged services, providing insights into why some categories have succeeded while others have failed. The jury is still out on the category that includes UMA dual mode services and femtocells.
Thomson’s environmentally friendly femtocell home gateway
Thomson’s TG870 femto-enabled home gateway apparently brings a major eco-design breakthrough: it’s equipped with an eco-mode that cuts average power consumption by half, thus significantly reducing the environmental impact.
Filed under: Market updates | Tagged: ABI, Aruba Networks, Femto Forum, Femtocell, femtocells, FMCA, ip.access, picoChip, Qualcomm, SafeNet, standards, Thomson
