Femtocell market update for week of 22 June 2009 – part 1

Operator news from the Femtocells World Summit
It’s been a big week for femto news on the back of the Femtocells World Summit in London.
Vodafone announces UK consumer femto launch
Vodafone opened the Femtocells World Summit by announcing that the Vodafone Access Gateway will be available in the UK from 1st July.  The device is a standalone [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 11 May 2009

There’s not a huge mount of femtocell news this week, but there is quite a lot of news about WiFi, which is seen by many as the main competitor to femtocells for connecting mobile devices to the internet at home.
It’s official – WiFi doesn’t work!
An Ofcom-commissioned report has revealed numerous problems with WiFi performance in [...]

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 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 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 [...]

Operators give femto updates at MWC 09

Several operators gave updates on their femtocell plans in Barcelona this week, some presenting in the FemtoZone and others in the main conference.
T-Mobile has completed friendly user trials in Germany, Poland, and the UK, and will start controlled consumer femtocell deployments in Germany in the middle of the year.  The trials uncovered some technical problems, [...]

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 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 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 8 September 2008

Softbank femtocell deployment
Unstrung reports that Softbank Mobile in Japan has installed 20,000 femtocells from NEC / Ubiquisys, and that it is also checking out equipment from Huawei.  But there are, apparently, still some technical and regulatory issues standing in the way of mass market deployment.
Orange goes for 3G UMA
Orange is upgrading its “Unik” dual mode [...]

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 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. [...]