Femtocell market update for week of 16 November 2009

SFR to launch ‘Home 3G’ femtocell
Adverts for SFR’s Home 3G femtocell have appeared on the Internet.  It’s a standalone femtocell that will work with any ISP.  The price is ­­free with a 24-month contract, €5 per month for 12-month commitment or €199 to buy the box outright.  Like the Vodafone Access Gateway, Home 3G is [...]

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 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 weeks of 29 June & 6 July 2009

Following a reprimand this afternoon from Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders , here’s an attempt to catch up with the last two weeks…
DoCoMo to launch HSPA femtocell later this year
Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo has given its femtocell an upgrade (pic), with plug’n’play provisioning and HSPA for faster data connections.  Interestingly, DoCoMo says the new [...]

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 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 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 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 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 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 24 November 2008

Singapore’s StarHub launches world’s first commercial 3G femtocell service
(Website ¦ FAQ)
StarHub’s ‘Home Zone’ femtocell is currently limited to the first 200 subscribers, so it’s perhaps more of a market trial than a full commercial launch.  It’s similar in principle to Sprint’s trial of the AIRAVE, which was initially limited to a couple [...]

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 [...]