Femtocell market update for week of 30 November 2009

Experiments in femtocell marketing
Following SFR’s entertaining promotional video for its new Home 3G femtocell, it’s interesting to see quite a few blogs and articles this week relating to the question of how femtocells should be marketed to consumers.
RCR Wireless recommends that femtocells should be featured in those junk-mail Christmas catalogues which “make a blanket with [...]

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 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 [...]

Femtocells – size does matter

In response to the Femto Forum’s “Greater Femto” initiative, operators are experimenting with a number of new concept designs aimed at taking femtocells outside the home and into offices and public areas.
Vodafone’s Teddy Graham has been a long-time advocate of the metro-femtocell, which can be attached to street furniture to improve local area coverage [...]

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 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 23 June 2008

News from the Femtocells Europe 2008 conference in London and the subsequent Femto Forum meeting

The femtocell industry is remarkably friendly. Here’s picoChip’s Rupert Baines (my partner in crime in Working Group 1 at the Femto Forum) with Yoav Volloch and Shlomo Gadot from chip competitor Percello.
Comcast to deploy WiMAX femtocells
Comcast SVP Dave Williams said during [...]

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 10 Mar 2008

Softbank to launch femtocells in October
Softbank’s femtocell launch is being planned for October. Interestingly, they have been using in-home repeaters to test the concept, which suggests a basic coverage proposition – repeaters don’t provide any of the other, more interesting benefits that femtocells offer (private cell capacity for the home, homezone discounts, femtozone services…).
Softbank [...]

Market update for week of 3 Mar 2008

Vodafone says it could launch a commercial femtocell service this year
At its Technology Update conference in London this week, Vodafone said it is aggressively pushing femtocell development because it sees the potential to cut costs in its 3G macro network deployments. “We intend to use the technology to reduce macro capex spend by up [...]

Market update for week of 11 Feb 2008 (Mobile World Congress week)

Operator femtocell trial announcements
O2 announced femtocell trials in the UK. Their current lab trial will be extended to 500 UK users in the summer, and O2 hopes to launch femtocells commercially in 2009. The business case is about adding extra capacity to the O2 network to cope with explosive data growth caused by [...]

Market update for week of 28 Jan 2008

Femto Forum aims to harmonise femto architectures
Today there are more femtocell network architectures than vendors (because some vendors support more than one). Initial femtocell deployments are using proprietary interfaces, but operators are pushing hard for interoperability, which allows them to purchase femtocell CPE from a wide selection of vendors irrespective of their choice of [...]