Femtocell market update for week of 22 June 2009 – part 3

Some brief notes on other announcements from last week…
Femtocell Industry Awards 2009

The winners of the Femto Forum’s inaugural Femtocell Industry Awards were announced at a dazzling gala dinner.  ip.access picked up awards for the nano3G picocell / enterprise femtocell (in the design and technology innovation category) and for our Facebook virtual fridge notes demo (in [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 16 Mar 2009

Infonetics says femtocells will thrive despite the recession
The latest report from Infonetics Research forecasts sales of femtocell and FMC network equipment will grow at a healthy rate through the economic downturn and then will really take off in 2011, hitting $8 billion in 2013.  According to the report’s authors, some operators are seeing the economic [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 15 September 2008

Users say how Sprint’s Airave could be improved
Airave users commenting on the Engadget site say that Sprint should remove the monthly fee (e.g. “I don’t mind buying the box and maybe even a one time fee for setup, but monthly recurring charges to fix bad signal issues? Hmmm… Nope.”  Others, not understanding the legal constraints, [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 18 August 2008

ip.access ranks top specialist femto vendor in operator perception survey
More details have been published from Heavy reading’s recent operator perception survey. The operators surveyed ranked their perceptions of femtocell equipment suppliers. Alcatel-Lucent got top marks among the large vendors, while ip.access was the highest ranked among the smaller femto vendors.
Business Week says Airave [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 28 July 2008

Airave to launch nationwide from 17 August
Following market trials in selected cities, Sprint’s Airave CDMA 1X femtocell will launch nationwide in the USA from 17 August. Pricing options have changed significantly from the trial. The service now costs $99.99 (for the box itself) + $4.99 per month (excluding taxes and various Sprint surcharges) [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 30 June 2008

Rumours of Airave nationwide deployment
Engadget reports that Sprint’s Airave (CDMA-1X) femtocell will be on sale across the USA from July 15th for $99. The comments on this page reveal some interesting consumer reaction to the product – albeit from a fairly technical audience. Business Week also reports the news, and concludes “for consumers [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 26 May

ABI predicts boom for femto silicon
A new report from ABI Research forecasts that the femtocell semiconductor market will grow from just under $72 million in 2008 to over $1.8 billion in 2013.  But manufacturers will need to be prepared to invest a lot in developing the technology in order to meet demanding price points required [...]

Market update for week of 19 May

Qualcomm invests in ip.access
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 [...]

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 [...]

Market update for week of 24 Mar 2008

Forbes says femtocells will cause mobile services price collapse
Hidden 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 [...]

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 [...]

Market update for week of 25 Feb 2008

3GPP Adds 3G Support to UMA Standard
3GPP completed a specification update effort last week that added 3G (Iu-interface) support to the UMA/GAN standard. 3G dual mode handsets with UMA support are expected in Q3 this year.
As well as supporting dual mode services that compete with femtocells, the announcement can also be seen as a [...]

Market update for week of 11 Feb 2008 (Mobile World Congress week)

Operator femtocell trial announcements
O2 announced femtocell trials in the UK. Their current lab trial will be extended to 500 UK users in the summer, and O2 hopes to launch femtocells commercially in 2009. The business case is about adding extra capacity to the O2 network to cope with explosive data growth caused by [...]

Market update for week of 17 December 2007

RadioFrame partners with NSN
You may remember that Nokia Siemens Networks is promoting a femtocell architecture based on an Iu interface from the Access Point to a gateway connecting to the core network. Rather than building its own Access Point, NSN is encouraging other vendors to build APs for certification against its universal gateway. [...]

Market update for week of 10 December 2007

Another femtocell market forecast
Infonetics Research predicts the femtocell market will reach $630M in 2010. This is less than the most recent ABI Research prediction, but it’s still a big number. IDATE was recently even more aggressive than ABI, predicting 18 million UMTS femtocell shipments in 2011 (compared to ABI’s 13 million). Here’s [...]