Femtocell market update for week of 30 Mar 2009

Cellcom picks Starent & AirWalk for CDMA femtocell deployment

Cellcom is planning to roll out CDMA femtocells to its enterprise customers in Wisconsin.  Unlike Sprint and Verizon, both of whom use Samsung’s femtocell solution, Cellcom will use AirWalk’s recently announced EdgePoint PRO femtocell access point (which supports up to 28 simultaneous users) and Starent’s XT30 Femto Gateway.

Although small, Cellcom has been a long-time, enthusiastic member of the Femto Forum.  The company’s executive VP and director of corporate development Rob Riordan says that femtocells will reduce the cost of in-building deployments compared to using repeaters which are “not cheap and…not a money maker.”  But building on the theme of his recent presentation at the Femtocells Asia conference, Riorden told Unstrung that “femtocells have to offer more than good coverage.”  He is keen to use enterprise and consumer femtocells as a platform for new services.

Telecom New Zealand tests femtocells

After publicly expressing interest in femtocells last week, Telecom New Zealand confirmed this week that it has been running trials using femtocells developed by Alcatel Lucent and Sagem connected to a server in Germany.  The company’s head of voice services Jason Foden says the results are “promising and exciting” but it’s too early to say if Telecom will sell femtocells.

Femto Fusion at BT

Further details of BT’s plans for its next generation Fusion service have emerged.  Dual-mode is being ditched in the face of disappointing trials, which attracted only a few hundred customers, and Fusion will be re-born using femtocells and picocells to improve indoor cellular coverage.

Watching picocells being deployed in France

Martin Sauter reports on a live installation of ip.access picocells to improve coverage in a shopping mall, and sees for himself how picocells are quicker and easier to install than repeaters.  Martin reports no difference in voice quality on the picocell compared with the macro network, even though the picocells share a DSL line with the shop’s computer systems.

Femtocells at CTIA

The pundits said femtocells would be a hot topic at this week’s CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas.  For Gadgetwise, femtocells were “top of the list” (despite concerns that femtocells could “clog up the Internet”!).  Unstrung was hoping for operator femto news and Fierce Telecom expected lots of vendor announcements.  And so it turned out…

• Starent announced the XT30 Service Convergence Platform (the one selected by Cellcom).
• Genband announced the monster-sized S9 Session Border Gateway plus enterprise femtocell features for its G9 gateway (enabling mobility within small and medium enterprises).
• Continuous Computing announced a partnership with TeamF1.  By combining TeamF1’s TR-069 management module and IPsec module with its own technology, Continuous Computing is creating a reference design for a femtocell-enabled home gateway, including femtocell, Wi-Fi router, broadband modem and firewall.  It’s all explained here.
• Tatara announced a partnership with Airvana, and the two companies demonstrated a SIP based femtocell solution.
• Tarara also announced a partnership with Acme Packet and one with AirWalk (but we already knew this following Acme packet’s announcement last week); the three companies demonstrated SIP based femtocell network integration.
• Rohde & Schwarz and mimoOn demonstrated 3GPP LTE femtocell testing.
• Agilent Technologies announced its “Signaling Analyzer Real Time (SART)”, which does real-time diagnostics, troubleshooting and historic analysis for femtocells.  (Yoda reportedly received a nominal fee for consultancy on the product name.)
• Cambridge Consultants demonstrated their Centaur GSM PHY femto reference design.
• Vanu announced a partner program for Its Anywave® Software Radio and Multi-RAN Solutions; Globecomm Systems, Sonus Networks, Starent Networks and STM Group have signed up.
• Airvana showed femto services and connected home demos.

In-flight GSM takes off

This week, OnAir announced its 10,000th flight with the Mobile OnAir in-flight connectivity service in commercial operation.  Not to be outdone, AeroMobile announced that passenger adoption of its own in-flight GSM service with Malaysian Airlines has exceeded 40% on some flights, with data devices proving especially popular.  (Reasonable pricing could have something to do with the service’s popularity.)

Kid-systeme says in-flight GSM systems can be installed on an aeroplane during an overnight stop, but Skuku and TriaGnoSys have an alternative proposal that requires no new equipment on the aircraft.  The system uses the existing air-to-ground communication system on the plane.  The downside is that passengers must take the SIM card out of their phones and put them into a USB device that plugs into the existing seatback entertainment system.  (Have you seen my SIM card?  I’m sure I dropped it around here somewhere…)

Femto Fools!

Notable femto-related April Fools Day jokes included Josh Adelson’s blog posting on outdoor femtocells, and Qualcomm’s spoof video about tiny basestations (femtocells) embedded in flying animals.

In other news…

• Mobile data revenues rise again.
• T-Mobile says mobile broadband will shift to pay-per-use.
• Spy chiefs fear that Huawei equipment in BT’s new communications network could be used to halt critical services such as power, food and water supplies.
• Lime is, apparently, not a lemon.
• Dave Nowicki’s trip report from the Femto Forum meeting in Tokyo.
• The building blocks of femtocells explained.
• A useful list of femtocell analyst reports.
• The silence of the cellphones (using femtocells to block phone signals in prisons).
• Femtocells have the potential to make a major impact in the Indian telecom market…
• Or do they?
• Femtocells & Unified Communications.
• Femtocells in the context of FMC.
• iPhone Skype client doesn’t threaten femtocells (yet).