Femtocell market update for week of 9 June 2008

Will SFR be first with femtocells in Europe?

“Sources” said this week that SFR will put femtocells on sale in France before the end the year.  One factor driving SFR is Orange’s “Unik” dual-mode FMC service, which offers a similar customer proposition to femtocells albeit with different technology.  Another is SFR’s acquisition of Neuf Cegetel, France’s number 2 broadband provider, which opens the way for femtocells to be marketed within a combined fixed+mobile offering.

Happy Birthday to the Femto Forum

The Femto Forum is a year old.  In a newsletter this week, chairman Simon Saunders sums up the first year’s achievements and looks forward to the challenges of the next 12 months, which should see commercial femtocell deployments in many countries around the world.

Do femtocells need new handset features?

Dean Bubley believes that “although existing 3G handsets can work with femtocells, they are not optimised for them.”  Most of the industry thinks that, while optimisations could be useful, the femtocell user experience with existing handsets is just fine.  It could be that Dean and the industry are in violent agreement.  To find out, we’ll have to wait for Dean’s new report entitled “The Argument for Femtocell-Optimised Handsets”.

3G iPhone signals the need for femtocells

Blogger Om Malik suggests that the 3G iPhone will put huge stress on the 3G networks.  “With the 3G iPhone, there is little desire to wait for a Wi-Fi connection,” he says.  With a flat rate data plan, you will simply “hit the high-speed 3G connection directly for whatever you want to do.”   O2 UK cites the surge in iPhone mobile Internet traffic as one of the reasons behind its interest in femtocells .  Vivek Dev, COO of Telefónica O2 Europe, said recently: “Our Apple iPhone is already driving unheard-of levels of mobile internet usage…Because so much of that usage is at home, femtocells coupled with DSL could provide an alternative capacity resource.”

More views on Iu-h

Kineto’s Steve Shaw admits that “while the UMA community would have been delighted if 3GPP had adopted GAN as the formal femtocell standard, the likelihood has always been low.”  However, he says Iu-h includes “a number of key principles first introduced in the 3GPP GAN standard”, such as “leveraging the existing Iu-cs/Iu-ps interfaces into the core network.”  Hmmm, is that it?  David Chambers sheds more light on things at Think Femtocell.   Meanwhile, TechWorld  reports that “upgradeability of current products [to Iu-h] won’t be very important, as proper [femtocell] roll-outs won’t take place till the standard is finished.”  Not sure where this information came from – I’d say quite the opposite is true.

Tecom shipping “UMA femtocells” to US (not)

Taiwan-based manufacturer Tecom says it has been shipping “UMA femtocell base stations” to “a leading branded vendor” in North America at a rate of more than 100,000 units per month.  The most likely explanation is that these are not femtocells at all, but routers compatible with T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home UMA service.  The routers prioritise voice over general internet traffic,  optimise phone battery life, and make WiFi security set-up easier.  Tecom says that demand for the router in North America is expected to reach two million units in 2008, increasing to seven million units in 2009.

Ryanair set for in-flight GSM launch this month

Ryanair has fitted 14 of its Boeing 737s with OnAir’s onboard mobile phone system (powered by ip.access’ nanoGSM picocells), and remains on course to launch service this month with an estimated 25-30 aircraft.

In other news…

• IntelliNet Buys Azaire
• A profile of picoChip
• Couple of femto articles in Mass High Tech