Femtocell market update for week of 7 September 2009

Telstra CTO wants femtocell apps
Despite having probably the best mobile network in the world (HSPA+ at 850 MHz with “spectacular” indoor coverage), Telstra CTO Hugh Bradlow is interested in femtocells.  He doesn’t want to use them for coverage, which he feels “sends the message that the operator has not built out its network properly”, but [...]

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 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 update for weeks of 29 Dec 2008 & 5 Jan 2009

AT&T recruiting for femtocell consumer trials
It’s reported that AT&T is contacting some of its customers asking if they’d like to test femtocells.  Ars Technica quotes a survey it received from a reader who was contacted: “AT&T’s new product is a small, security-enabled cellular base station that easily connects to your home DSL or Cable Internet, [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 1 December 2008

Good news on femtocell interference
The Femto Forum has published the results of an extensive radio study, concluding that interference is not a barrier to wide scale femtocell deployment even when the femtocells occupy the same radio channel as the macro network.  Many Femto Forum member companies contributed to the study, [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 6 October 2008

Verizon CTO talks about femtocell plans
Mark Wegleitner revealed some of Verizon’s thinking on femtocells in a recent interview with Telephony Online…
“On femtocells and dual-mode phones: We’re planning for trial of femtocells. Both had obstacles. In one case, the femtocell cost was a problem. In other case, the availability of dual-mode phones was a problem. Both [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 29 September 2008

Maxis plans femtocell trial
Maxis, Malaysia’s leading mobile operator, plans to trial femtocells by year end.  Head of Radio Technologies, Denis Seek Kwai Yin, told the Femtocells Asia 2008 conference in Kuala Lumpur that Maxis is interested in using femtocells to implement home zone tariffs and location tracking services such as intruder alert.
Ericsson & Tatara collaborate [...]

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, [...]

Market update for week of 12 May

Was Airave Sprint’s second choice?
This article makes the interesting assertion that Sprint originally planned to roll out a WiFi dual mode service, but switched to femtocells after the launch of HotSpot@Home by T-Mobile. The author argues that femto was therefore Sprint’s second choice, but it looks to me as though the headline should read [...]

Market update for week of 31 Mar 2008

There was a lot of femto noise at CTIA this week in Las Vegas. With the exception of the ip.access / Sonus live demo, and one or two partnership announcements, most of the news was about CDMA femtocells…
Verizon to launch femtocells in 2008
“Our plans are to deploy femtocells in 2008,” said Verizon Wireless CTO, [...]

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 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 [...]

Market update for week of 4 Feb 2008

No time for analysis this week, with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona coming up. Here are the headlines…
ip.access & Mavenir partner for femtozone services
“Together with Mavenir Systems, we are creating a platform for operators to offer a wide range of new mobile phone services for the home. With femtozone services, operators can [...]