Femtocell market update for week of 20 Apr 2009

Vodafone explores metro femto
Vodafone has been experimenting with outdoor deployment of LTE metro femtocells.  The company’s head of new technologies and innovation Andy Dunkin says that the concept is strong, but requires a low cost solution for wireless backhaul at 50-100 Mbps.
Femtocells and the consumer electronics industry
Fierce Wireless wonders whether femtocells could bring the large [...]

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 15 December 2008

Vodafone Spain femto trial is for business customers
The drive to deploy femtocells in the enterprise gained momentum this week, with Vodafone announcing plans to pilot an “Access Gateway” (Huawei femtocell) for its business customers in Spain.
Femtocell standards progress
Airvana’s Doug Kniseley gives a good round-up of the year’s developments in femtocell standardisation, including the “herculean last [...]

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 weeks of 20 & 27 October 2008

AT&T announces 3G femtocell trial
AT&T says it will start femtocell trials later this year.  “As the nation’s leading provider of both wireless and broadband, it makes sense that we would examine the potential benefits of femtocells for our customers,” an AT&T spokeswoman said.  “We’re currently doing testing in our labs and a trial is planned [...]

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 [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 16 June 2008

RadioFrame Slams Kineto Claims
RFN clearly couldn’t stand back and watch Kineto spinning up a victory story in the femtocell standards battle.  Some strong language in this Unstrung interview with RFN’s GM EMEA Mark Keenan (who is also a Femto Forum board member).  This will make the upcoming Femto Forum gathering even more lively than usual.
Dean [...]

Femtocell market update for week of 2 June

Good progress towards femtocell standardisation
The headlines this week give the impression that a new femtocell standard has been agreed.  This is something of an overstatement, but there has been a lot of encouraging progress recently in 3GPP and the Femto Forum, and consensus is now building around a framework for the standard.
For example, it has [...]

Market update for week of 14 Apr 2008

Why do we need 4G femtocells?
This week’s LTE patent agreement amongst some of the major infrastructure suppliers has sparked some interest in 4G femtocells. LTE promises data rates of up to 120 Mbps per base station sector, shared between all users. In principle, LTE-enabled femtocells could offer the full speed to a single [...]

Market update for week of 7 Apr 2008

Dell’Oro femto forecast
Dell’Oro Group forecasts that shipments of femtocells will grow from 170,000 in 2008 to 27.4 million in 2012 (an amazing 356% CAGR). Nearly all these femtocells will be W-CDMA-based. Femto revenues will rise from nearly $50 million in 2008 to over $2.7 billion in 2012. However, the growth will initially [...]

Market update for week of 17 Mar 2008

Ericsson maintains its resistance to 3G femtocells
This time Ericsson is saying that the chips are too expensive, so they won’t build a 3G femtocell before 2009. But analysts believe the real reason for Ericsson’s resistance is the fact that femtocells threaten the vendor’s core macro cellular infrastructure business. “Ericsson welcomes the femtocell [...]

Market update for week of 25 Feb 2008

3GPP Adds 3G Support to UMA Standard
3GPP completed a specification update effort last week that added 3G (Iu-interface) support to the UMA/GAN standard. 3G dual mode handsets with UMA support are expected in Q3 this year.
As well as supporting dual mode services that compete with femtocells, the announcement can also be seen as a [...]

Market update for week of 21 Jan 2008

TeliaSonera to trial femtocells (is dual mode FMC a dead end?)
TeliaSonera will soon begin femtocell trials in Sweden and another country, and is planning end-user trials in Q3. One interesting aspect of this is that TeliaSonera already has a UMA-based FMC service called “Home Free”. Whereas Orange and T-Mobile US seem comfortable [...]

Market update for week of 10 December 2007

Another femtocell market forecast
Infonetics Research predicts the femtocell market will reach $630M in 2010. This is less than the most recent ABI Research prediction, but it’s still a big number. IDATE was recently even more aggressive than ABI, predicting 18 million UMTS femtocell shipments in 2011 (compared to ABI’s 13 million). Here’s [...]