femtocells

JV to use femtocells to attack German enterprise market

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:59:58 -0500

KPN and Swedish OnePhone have launched a joint venture in the hope of breaking into the fiercely competitive German SME business telephony sector using femtocells.

The company, which will operate under the OnePhone brand, will target German businesses with between 30 and 1,500 employees that are looking for a more cost-effective and flexible telecoms solution. OnePhone said that installing femtocells within the office space of SME would make the use of conventional telephone systems and desk telephones obsolete. When outside the range of the femto users would automatically roam onto KPN's E-Plus network.

Brian Stout, KPN Belgium's CEO and OnePhone's supervisory board member, said that there were plans to offer the same service to SMEs in Belgium and Holland, but would not commit to launch dates.

For more on this story:
Total Telecom

Femtocell shipment forecasts cut by 55% for 2009

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:51:18 -0500

Despite 2009 being positioned as ‘the year' when operators would start to deploy femtocells in their millions, a leading market research firm has dramatically reduced the expected number that it now believes will ship this year.

ABI Research had previously forecast that 790,000 femtocells would ship in 2009, but has now cut this number by over 50 per cent to about 350,000. The company blames this huge shortfall on mobile operators being slower to adopt the technology than anticipated.

ABI's Aditya Kaul said, "Even femtocell vendors are a bit surprised that the operators haven't pushed femtocells as much or as soon as expected. We expect that deployments in 2010 will pick up but will be slower than expected--our data suggests about a 40 per cent reduction on previous estimates."

Kaul also speculates that the slower uptake of femtocells has been due to ongoing doubts about the value proposition, the poor economic conditions and fears in some quarters that a rapid increase in femtocell numbers would cause interference in the macro network.

"Next year will be critical: if conditions don't improve by the end of 2010, some smaller vendors may find themselves in trouble," Kaul added.

While all the major US operators along with Vodafone in Europe offer femtocells, the US offerings have been criticised for being highly priced, and Vodafone's Access Gateway device has sunk into near total obscurity.

For more on this story:
Daily Tech

New femtocell aims at the enterprise

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:41:29 -0500

As residential femtocells enter a deployment low-point, developers are ramping up the opportunities open to mobile operators for these low-powered base stations within the enterprise.

Making the case for these beefed up femtos is Airvana with its new HubBub High-Capacity 3G femtocell which aims to improve voice coverage and data capacity in the work place. The device, says the company, can support up to 16 simultaneous users making voice calls within a range of up to 600m, or up to 40 people at the same time using low-bandwidth applications such as push email.

"It's not a consumer femtocell on steroids. This is purpose built for the enterprise market," said Paul Callahan, Airvana's VP of business development. "We developed HubBub because of requests from mobile operators for just such a product. You'll find companies have employees on plans with different networks, and this is an opportunity for operators to convert the whole firm to one single plan."

Airvana said that, as well as supporting over three times the bandwidth of femtocells aimed at the consumer market with a maximum throughput of 21.6Mbps downstream and up to 5.7Mbps upstream, the HubBub also has the power to penetrate through multiple floors in an office block.

"We learned a lot from the consumer picocell market. I think future products will be available at a much lower cost and will be plug-and-play," Callahan said.

For more on this story:
V3

'Superfemto' chip aims at 2km range

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:12:55 -0400

Stepping outside of the volume femtocell chipset market, the silicon developer, picoChip, has unveiled a new design that it claims will provide HSPA cellular coverage over a 2km area.

The company maintains that its Class 3 PC8219E chip is the first to enable low-cost, wide-area open access femtocell deployments in areas where operators need to improve coverage and capacity. picoChip said the design included a network-monitoring function that would allow a ‘Superfemtocell' to reconfigure itself to behave like a handset receive chain, synchronising with a macro-base station nearby, and provide the basis for Self-Organising Network functions.

Nigel Toon, president and CEO of picoChip, said, "We are already shipping in volume for residential applications, but this announcement demonstrates how femtocell technology is more broadly applicable. Given the prevalence of mobile devices there is huge potential to address the widespread problems of in-building coverage, to fix coverage black spots or add capacity where it is needed."

The new chip, according to picoChip, builds on the existing PC8208 and 8209 PHYs technology to provide a product that would be classified as similar to the 3GPP 'Local Area Basestation' or traditional picocells. However, the PC8219E design is said to add the femtocell's capabilities to use standard backhaul and to self-configure for interference management.

The Femto Forum has recently standardised femtocells into class one--typically residential, class two--primarily indoor for enterprise, and class three--for rural, metro and wider area deployment.

For more on this story:
EE Times

Femtos have limited potential, says Mobilkom, while Forum plans plugfest

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:07:59 -0400

Mobilkom Austria the cellular subsidiary of Telekom Austria, has asked a select group of femtocell vendors to bid for a supply contract, while publicly stating that it sees only limited use for the technology.

According to Mobilkom CTO, Johann Pichler, femtocells are good for boosting in-building coverage, but are restricted in their usage due to interference. Pichler also claims that femtos are not a good solution for offloading data traffic from the macro network, which is often suggested as a key selling point for the miniature base stations. "If you have a lot of femtos in the network, you... can have problems with interference," he told Unstrung. "To offload traffic makes no sense."

This negative viewpoint could be worrying for the femtocell community given that Mobilkom was among the first to trial the technology in Europe and started testing enterprise and residential femtocells from Huawei in November 2008. Pichler said the feedback from the trial had been good and that the main traffic on the femtos was voice, rather than data.

Adding further doubts, Pichler has questioned the price of commercial femtocells, claiming it needs to be pitched close to that of existing Wi-Fi routers to be successful. "It makes no sense for it to be more expensive, otherwise you can't bring it on the market."

However, given that Mobilkom hinted that it might deploy femtocells in some of the six other countries where it has mobile operations, these comments might suggest that potential bidders should cut their pricing to the bone.

Meanwhile, the Femto Forum has outlined the next step in making the technology fit for widescale deployment with the announcement of its first major interoperability testing programme planned for March 2010 in Sophia Antipolis, France. The plugfest, which will be coordinated by ETSI, will involve interop testing between femto network gateways, security gateways, access points and chipset vendors to verify the 3GPP's Iuh interface as defined in release 8.

Femto Forum chairman Simon Saunders commented: "Vendor interoperability is the key ingredient that will give operators the confidence to start mass deployments. There are currently over 20 femtocell access point models and over a dozen network gateways on the market and this programme will start to ensure they all work together harmoniously."

Saunders added that release 9 of the 3GPP standard, which will take in LTE capabilities, is set to be frozen in December, and work is also progressing within the 3GPP2 group for CDMA versions of femtocells.

For more on this story:
Unstrung and EE Times

Femtos needed to boost data throughput, claim Qualcomm execs

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:28:28 -0400

Operators looking to take advantage of the data speeds offered by LTE will need to look to deploy denser networks, including the use of femto and picocells. This viewpoint, put forward by the former and current CEOs of Qualcomm, Irwin and Paul Jacobs, could mean operators using a lot more base station hardware than in today's networks, given that the industry should not expect more spectrum to become available to ease capacity issues.

"This means thinking about much denser radio networks" said Paul Jacobs, speaking at the US CTIA conference. "With more of a femto or picocell architecture in place, operators could expect an eight- to ten-times improvement in network performance. However, managing interference with so many more radios in place will be one issue, and managing handover between many small base stations will be another."

The likelihood of a significant increase in data traffic promoted Paul Jacobs to highlight the backhaul issue that operators will also need to address. "At the moment in some places there are higher rates over the air than there is in the backhaul, and that's not good."

While accepting that this bottleneck will force mobile operators to differentiate among heavier and lighter users of data, he cautioned about calls for net neutrality regulations. "I don't necessarily believe that you ought to go down and say, 'This service is OK and that service isn't.' Maybe that's too intrusive. But certainly you can go in and shape traffic."

One industry analyst listening to the panel, Jack Gold, commented: "Technology alone won't get us out of the looming problem we've got. Femtocells are one possible solution, but if everyone uses femtocells that can carry data, that will put a lot more traffic on DSL and cable modem networks."

Qualcomm is a leading supplier of femtocell chipsets and has made investments in femtocell manufacturers.

For more on this story:
IDG News

Femtocells: Price remains stumbling block to early uptake, claims report

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:33:21 -0400

While some vendors of femtocells are forecasting unit shipments as high as four million by the end of 2010, the limited number of commercial deployments is making predictions difficult for market researchers. However, according to a new report from Unstrung Insider, the biggest single concern for operators and vendors is consumer reluctance to pay the high price being asked today.

The report's author, research analyst Tim Kridel, believes that around 500,000 femtocells will ship this year, but claims that femtocell vendors are expecting that individual orders from carriers aren't likely to be larger than 10,000 to 20,000 units until at least late 2010.

Some vendors are expecting an eightfold increase in shipments to 4 million units by the end of 2010. "Other vendors expect the 2010 volume to be about one million," writes Kridel.

A US$100 wholesale price for femtocells is generally seen as the cost point that will encourage better adoption by operators, but there have to be more orders booked before that target could be hit, maintains Kridel. "Vendors and operators agree that US$100 is the sweet spot in terms of triggering large orders and aggressive deployments. However, that price point is unlikely until late 2010 because it will take that long before carriers start to place the large orders necessary to drive down costs."

On a brighter note, the report states that femtocells will shoulder the additional task of reducing the macro network's Capex and Opex by diverting 3G data traffic onto the broadband provider's network, thereby reducing the need to split cells, add radios at existing cell sites, and/or expand backhaul capacity.

For more on this story:
Unstrung

Femtocells: NSN and China Mobile demo TD-LTE femto, but questions remain

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:37:50 -0400

While claiming the demonstration was a world first, the public display by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and China Mobile of a TD-LTE femtocell might indicate that the giant Chinese operator is keen to implement LTE in place of the government-imposed 3G standard, TD-SCDMA.

But the intent behind the femtocell demonstration was to prove the indoor penetration of TD-LTE given, according to China Mobile, that the majority of mobile broadband capacity will be consumed inside homes and offices. "TD-LTE femtocells can fully leverage the advantages of TDD frequencies, provide a fast and flexible indoor coverage solution and effectively manage network capacity and cost," said Huang Xiaoqing, general manager of the China Mobile Research Institute.

This early demonstration of a TD-LTE femtocell has given rise to speculation that China Mobile will launch the device as soon as it can go commercially live with LTE to provide hot spot coverage and much improved indoor penetration.

NSN stated that the experimental TD-LTE femtocell was able to deliver speeds higher than were possible using xDSL technology, and indicated, according to Stephan Scholz, CTO at NSN, the company's "innovative research leadership in LTE."

However, this effort to prove the capabilities of TD-LTE has been seen by business commentators as an attempt to encourage wider industry support for the TDD version of LTE. It would appear increasingly likely that China Mobile will be the only TD-LTE operator and will face the considerable challenge of creating a viable eco-system for device vendors to develop handsets based upon this standard.

The long-delayed deployment of China's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G technology has raised doubts over its future success, not helped by the disappointing subscriber numbers recently announced by China Mobile. The company said that, at the end of August, its 3G subscriber base stood at 1.33 million, an increase of 239,000 on the previous month's tally.

For more on this story:
Softpedia
Press release

Femtocells and broadcasting solutions must rescue 3G networks, says Unwired Insight

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:29:53 -0400

With a 20-fold increase in 3G traffic volumes forecast over the next five years, alternative means of delivering services to 3G handsets will be essential in order to prevent major capacity problems, according to Unwired Insight. A new report, entitled ‘Will 3G Networks Cope?', shows that complementary distribution methods, including femtocells and broadcasting solutions, could collectively carry nearly half of total service traffic by 2014.

"Many 3G network operators are in for a tough time over the next few years," says co-author Dr Alastair Brydon. "If they don't now start using complementary distribution methods, such as femtocells and broadcasting networks, 3G networks will not be able to cope with future traffic demand, even with LTE," he added. Article

3G coverage requirement pushes femtocell market

Ian Channing — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:53:17 -0400

Rising demand for improved 3G coverage, particularly for home voice and broadband usage, will be a significant driver for the femtocell market over the next two to three years with subscriber numbers reaching 15 million globally during 2012.

More and more customers are using their mobile phones in the residential environment for voice and broadband but generally poor indoor signal strength and slow Web access means demand for femtocells is rising. Research carried out by Juniper evaluated three adoption scenarios for femtocells and in all cases found that the 15 million estimate of subscriber numbers could easily be exceeded, particularly in developed markets. The Juniper report also predicted that shipments of standalone femtocells will take off over the 2011/2012 period but the integrated units sector will be larger in value by 2014.

The top markets for femtocell subscribers will be Western Europe, North America and the Far East/China. Revenues from new, advanced femtocell services will gain traction as soon as 2011.

For more on this story go to Mobile Europe and 3g.co.uk