Femtocell market update for week of 9 November 2009

NTT DoCoMo launches MyArea femtocell
Following through on an initial announcement last July, NTT DoCoMo has launched its MyArea HSUPA-capable femtocell in Japan.  According to DoCoMo, the femtocell “creates a private FOMA area in the home as a highly stable wireless environment for high-speed packet communication”.  Pricing is only $5 per month with no sign-up fee [...]

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 5 October 2009

AT&T expands 3G MicroCell availability
According to AT&T’s website, the 3G MicroCell is now available in Atlanta (29 stores) and Columbia (3 stores).  This follows last week’s launch in Raleigh (11 stores) and the original market of Charlotte NC (19 stores), making 62 stores in total.  One delighted customer commented, “Holy crap – AT&T 3g Microcell [...]

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 31 August 2009

Vodafone publishes indoor 3G coverage maps
Vodafone has published new 3G coverage maps for the UK, for the first time showing both indoor and outdoor coverage.  From a glance at the maps it’s obvious that indoor coverage is very poor in many areas.  (In practice the situation may be even worse than the maps show – [...]

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 15 June 2009

First Iu-h demo
picoChip, Starent and Continuous Computing are set to show the world’s first demonstration of the new 3GPP Iu-h standard.  picoChip is supplying the femtocell silicon and PHY software for the Access Point, Continuous Computing is supplying the femto software stacks for the AP and Starent is supplying the femto gateway.  The demo will [...]

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 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 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 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 2 Feb 2009

TDC to deploy femtocells in Denmark
TDC Mobile says it is working with NEC towards the potential roll-out of femtocells in Denmark in late 2009. The company is currently conducting a trial with “several femtocell access points”. Flemming Hynkemejer, CTO of TDC Mobile says, “Femtocell technology promises to provide our customers with a number of [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 26 Jan 2009

Portugal Telecom testing femtocells
Portuguese daily Jornal de Negocios reports that Portugal Telecom is testing femtocells for use by its own residential and business ADSL subscribers, but the business model is not yet defined.
AT&T 3G femtocell sighted
Details of a 3G femtocell appeared briefly on the AT&T website last week.  The web page has subsequently been taken [...]