Another European operator has gone public with its intent to use femtocells to improve 3G coverage for both residential and business users. Mobilkom Austria has selected 35 customers to trial the service until mid-2009, to be followed shortly by the commercial launch.
Apart from residential users, the company has named the hotel chain Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts der Verkehrsbüro Group, and the Vienna ARZ computing centre as among the first customers within the pilot project to use femtocells to improve their indoor coverage. Hannes Ametsreiter, CMO Mobilkom Austria, said this was the first femtocell pilot project with real customers in Central Europe, and would look to prove that quick and secure indoor network coverage could be provided using this particular technology.
The pilot would be run using two different femtocells, both provided by Huawei. One model is aimed at the residential market to provide connectivity for up to four mobile phones or data cards, while the second is aimed at the SoHo market providing connections for up to 16 users.
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