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 14 September 2009

A ‘growing divide’ on 4G femtocells?
Fierce Wireless reports “a growing divide between those who believe femtocells and picocells are necessary in 4G coverage and those that don’t”.
In the Pro camp we find Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow, who used his talk at this week’s 4G World conference to urge network equipment vendors to focus on picocells, [...]

FON and femtocells

Sounds attractive, doesn’t it?  Femto + FON certainly seems like a hot idea, and the journalists have been all over the recent announcement from Ubiquisys and FON (both of which are backed by Google).
But unfortunately the Femto FON business model doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.  The analysis is a bit involved, so please bear with [...]

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 3 & 10 August 2009

Journalist “gives up on femtocells” (for no good reason)
Writing in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Charles Arthur says he would “be really happy if the mobile operators would start rolling out femtocells”, but believes they are instead promoting the “opposite phenomenon” – WiFi routers that use 3G mobile broadband service for backhaul.  (Here’s a [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 27 July 2009

Yet more experiences with the Vodafone Access Gateway
In addition to ip.access’ un-boxing video, there have been a number of interesting updates this week as VAG users start to stress their new femtocells.
Think Femtocell’s David Chambers reports femtocell data speeds comparable to WiFi on the 802.11b network in his home (with lower latency on the femto).  [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 22 June 2009 – part 3

Some brief notes on other announcements from last week…
Femtocell Industry Awards 2009

The winners of the Femto Forum’s inaugural Femtocell Industry Awards were announced at a dazzling gala dinner.  ip.access picked up awards for the nano3G picocell / enterprise femtocell (in the design and technology innovation category) and for our Facebook virtual fridge notes demo (in [...]

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 4 May 2009

Ericsson holds out on 3G femtocells
Ericsson SVP and head of business unit networks Johan Wibergh said this week, “we still don’t understand the business case for 3G femtocells”.  Speaking after a Q&A session at Ericsson’s capital market day event, he told Unstrung that WiFi is the answer to the indoor data problem, and that Ericsson [...]

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 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 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 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 [...]