Femtocell market update for week of 26 October 2009

China Unicom launches “3G Inn” femtocell
According to an announcement in Chinese (translation here), China Unicom has launched a commercial 3G femtocell service targeted at “high end” consumers.  The so-called “3G Inn” service requires a 2 Mbps residential broadband connection, and is available for a monthly fee.  With a mere 140 million subscribers, China Unicom [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 12 October 2009

Mobilkom Austria gives mixed messages on femtocells
Mobilkom has announced that it wants to deploy femtocells commercially in Austria next year (and possibly in other European mobile subsidiaries of parent company Telekom Austria).  However, the company’s top management provides little encouragement for vendors to respond enthusiastically to its RFP.  Mobilkom CTO Johann Pichler told Unstrung he [...]

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 20 Apr 2009

Vodafone explores metro femto
Vodafone has been experimenting with outdoor deployment of LTE metro femtocells.  The company’s head of new technologies and innovation Andy Dunkin says that the concept is strong, but requires a low cost solution for wireless backhaul at 50-100 Mbps.
Femtocells and the consumer electronics industry
Fierce Wireless wonders whether femtocells could bring the large [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 13 Apr 2009

Femto Forum & SRG publish comprehensive femtocell business case paper
The full business case white paper from Signals Research Group is now available on the Femto Forum website.  It’s hard to sum up all 80 pages in a simple soundbite, but here’s how some of the telecoms press did it…

Telecoms.com says it “appears to be the [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 6 Apr 2009

Femtocell standard published
The Femto Forum, 3GPP and the Broadband Forum have announced that the world’s first femtocell standard has been officially published by 3GPP.  The new Iu-h standard covers network architecture, radio and interference aspects, provisioning and security, and forms part of 3GPP’s Release 8 specification.  Femtocell management and provisioning are standardised via extensions to [...]

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 [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 23 Mar 2009

Femtocells 5x faster than the macro network
Based on side-by-side testing, Airvana says its HubBubTM femtocell provides EVDO data speeds consistently five times faster than the existing wireless macro network inside homes.  The company has carried out statistically meaningful tests of femtocell performance in a variety of environments as part of an operator trial, and will [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 9 Mar 2009

AT&T includes femtocells in major 3G investment plan
This week AT&T announced plans to invest around $12 billion in its broadband networks (wireless and wired) in 2009.  As well as adding 2,100 new cell sites across the US, AT&T also highlighted “customer trials leading toward general availability of AT&T 3G MicroCell offerings, which utilize femtocells and [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 23 Feb 2009

Orange’s explains why it believes femtocells are only for the enterprise
Orange EVP and group CTO Marc Fossier told Unstrung that there are three “major issues” with residential femtocells: spectrum management, security, and price.  But he believes these constraints apply less in the enterprise.  Referring to residential femtocells, he says “no way” rather a lot [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 16 Feb 2009

(Also see here for the week’s operator femtocell news.)
Qualcomm announces femto chipsets
Up until now, the major silicon suppliers have held back from developing femto-specific chipsets, so Qualcomm’s announcement is a significant endorsement for the industry. The company says it will offer HSPA+ and CDMA2000 ‘Femtocell Station Modem’ chipsets, including baseband functions, network listen and integrated [...]

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 19 Jan 2009

Verizon launches “Wireless Network Extender” femtocell
(Website ¦ FAQ ¦ User manual)
As predicted by Engadget, Verizon has begun selling its femtocell in stores and online.  It uses the same system as Sprint’s AIRAVE, based on the Samsung UbiCell.  Here are the highlights:

Voice and CDMA 1X data only (no EV-DO)
Up to [...]

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 15 December 2008

Vodafone Spain femto trial is for business customers
The drive to deploy femtocells in the enterprise gained momentum this week, with Vodafone announcing plans to pilot an “Access Gateway” (Huawei femtocell) for its business customers in Spain.
Femtocell standards progress
Airvana’s Doug Kniseley gives a good round-up of the year’s developments in femtocell standardisation, including the “herculean last [...]