Femtocell market update for week of 8 June 2009

Sprint offers its femtocell to MVNO and cable partners
Sprint has announced that it will white-label its AIRAVE femtocell, enabling wholesale partners to offer their own branded CDMA femtocell services.  This includes MVNOs (such as Virgin Mobile USA), as well as wireline and cable operators.
“The femtocell offering is not only a differentiator in the marketplace [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 1 June 2009

AIRAVE economics
Here’s how one Sprint subscriber calculates the value of his AIRAVE femtocell:
“It was costing us $32 per month for our unlimited long distance land line and it would cost us an additional $25 per month to have the AIRAVE.  So we are saving $7 per month with the AIRAVE, with the added bonus of [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 4 May 2009

Ericsson holds out on 3G femtocells
Ericsson SVP and head of business unit networks Johan Wibergh said this week, “we still don’t understand the business case for 3G femtocells”.  Speaking after a Q&A session at Ericsson’s capital market day event, he told Unstrung that WiFi is the answer to the indoor data problem, and that Ericsson [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 9 Feb 2009

Femto Forum study finds positive femto business cases – lots of them!
We’ve seen a lot of negative opinion bandied about on the subject of the femtocell business case, and a number of partial reposts.  But a new study from Signals Research Group, commissioned by the Femto Forum, aims to put the issue to bed once [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 12 Jan 2009

Ubiquisys and Percello announce partnership
Ubiquisys and Percello have announced that they will be integrating Percello’s PRC6000 chip into Ubiquisys’ ZoneGate femtocell.  As an investor in both companies, T-Venture might have had a hand in the matchmaking.
So is Ubiquisys ditching picoChip in favour of Percello?  Well, not exactly.  According to Ubi’s founder and CTO Will Franks, [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 8 December 2008

AT&T excited about Q209 femtocell launch
John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T’s operations, said AT&T is validating femtocell technology now with customers and employees.  ”We expect that we will be into a broader-scale metropolitan deployment the second quarter of next year,” Stankey said. “We are really excited about this…I don’t know how you compete in [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 10 November 2008

Mobilkom announces femtocell trials
Austrian operator Mobilkom has said that it is piloting 35 residential and business femtocells from Huawei.  The pilot project will run until the second quarter of 2009, with the final product offering to be launched in the first half of next year.
SoftBank – as you were
Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Chief Strategy Officer for SoftBank [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 3 November 2008

AT&T’s CEO of Mobility and Consumer Markets confirms femtocell trials
Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, AT&T’s iPhone chief, Ralph de la Vega, spoke about AT&T’s plans for femtocell market testing in 2009.
T-mobile also confirms femtocell trials
T-Mobile International CTO Joachim Horn says T-Mobile is testing the femtocell user experience in a [...]

Femtocell market update for weeks of 20 & 27 October 2008

AT&T announces 3G femtocell trial
AT&T says it will start femtocell trials later this year.  “As the nation’s leading provider of both wireless and broadband, it makes sense that we would examine the potential benefits of femtocells for our customers,” an AT&T spokeswoman said.  “We’re currently doing testing in our labs and a trial is planned [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 13 October 2008

Telefónica O2 prepares new femto trial
Unstrung says that Telefónica O2 Europe is planning a new femtocell consumer trial early next year, and implies that new vendors may be involved.  The article doesn’t say where the trial will be, but it mentions a previously announced UK trial involving NEC and Ubiquisys.  Telefónica O2 has also been [...]

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 1 September 2008

DoCoMo updates its femtocell offering
Japanese giant NTT DoCoMo said it is planning to use a new version of Mitsubishi’s femtocell for its “Home Area” service.  The new femto supports HSPA with 14.4 Mbps downlink speeds and 5.7 Mbps uplink.  DoCoMo’s original Mitsubishi femtocell has been in use since the autumn of 2007, although without much [...]

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 11 August 2008

Airave  reviews mostly positive
More reviews of the Sprint Airave appeared this week, most being very positive on the technology but not so pleased with the pricing. Here’s a selection of quotes…
Engadget says…

“Here’s what it all boils down to – does this unit really make a noticeable improvement in call quality and signal strength? In [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 4 August 2008

Early Airave customers appear satisfied
Early blog reviews following Sprint’s Airave femtocell launch are enthusiastic…
“I just got my Airave on Tuesday, and so far I am absolutely loving this thing! … All in all I give it a 5 out of 5! The only thing I cannot access is anything that uses the Mobile Broadband [...]