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 25 May 2009

Have we lost interest in 3G femtocells?
Last week’s press coverage from the LTE World Summit has caused some speculation that the industry has abandoned 3G femtocells.  For example, IridiaBlog comments, “we have seen some announcements that would seem to point towards femtocells becoming part of LTE deployment rather than trying to make them an adjunct [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 18 May 2009

Case for LTE femtocells
Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders laid out the case for LTE femtocells at the LTE World Summit in Berlin.  In a nutshell, maximising spectrum re-use they will ensure more users receive peak data rates more of the time, especially inside buildings.  “By adopting femtocells operators can roll out a much better performing [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 27 Apr 2009

Femtocells to be part of UQ Communications WiMAX service
UQ Communications is gearing up to launch a commercial mobile WiMAX service in Japan in July.  Speaking at the WiMAX Forum Congress Asia event held in Singapore UQ president Takeshi Tanaka said “people are beginning to think that cellular internet is fake…the browser is limited, the content [...]

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 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 2 Mar 2009

Femtocells won’t feature in Verizon’s initial LTE launch
There has been lots of talk about rolling out LTE networks “from the indoors out”.  Verizon CTO Dick Lynch said last December that Verizon would introduce LTE femtocells shortly after rolling out its LTE network, but this week Verizon confirmed that femtocells are not part of the LTE [...]

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 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 17 November 2008

KTF working on femtocells
KTF, Korea’s second largest mobile operator, has announced that it is collaborating with Huawei on the development of femtocells (presumably WCDMA).
Pictures of SFR’s femtocell
This article in French says that SFR is still experimenting with femtocells, and shows a picture of an SFR branded femtocell (Ubiquisys flavour) plugged into [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 22 September 2008

Japan’s SoftBank getting ready to launch 3G femtocells
The big announcement at the “Femtocells Asia 2008″ conference was SoftBank’s plan to launch 10,000 femtocells in Japan from January 2009, which may turn out to be the first commercial 3G femtocell deployment anywhere in the world.  SoftBank CTO, Junichi Miyakawa, presented details of the technical solution from [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 21 July 2008

Chunghwa Telecom to buy 3000 femtocells
Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom is reported to have put out a tender for 3000 femtocells.  It’s not huge, but it’s indicative of global interest in femtocells.
Indoor performance is holding back mobile broadband
Excitement about the rapid uptake of mobile broadband (accessing the internet from laptops via HSDPA) has led to predictions that [...]

Market update for week of 14 Apr 2008

Why do we need 4G femtocells?
This week’s LTE patent agreement amongst some of the major infrastructure suppliers has sparked some interest in 4G femtocells. LTE promises data rates of up to 120 Mbps per base station sector, shared between all users. In principle, LTE-enabled femtocells could offer the full speed to a single [...]

Market update for week of 18 Feb 2008

Further insights from O2
O2’s Head of Core Network Innovation, John Carvalho gave further insights this week into the operator’s femtocell plans. Interestingly, Carvalho sees femtocell price points stabilising at £50-80, but not before 2009 and not until mass deployments are underway. This is perhaps more realistic than Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin’s comments last [...]