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Growing
consumer and operator interest
The Forum launched its first femtocell market status report back in
November 2009 – three months later our second report showed a
50%
rise in operator commitments. We’ve now hit 75%. With the
technical challenges facing the femtocell market overcome, operators
aren’t the only ones paying attention to femtocells
–
consumers are too.
Femtocells have now been deployed across three continents with a total
of nine live commercial networks and five further deployment
commitments. Since November, SFR, OPTIMUS and China Unicom have all
launched commercial services while, Free in France, KDDI, and Network
Norway have all committed to the technology. SoftBank in Japan also
looks set to deploy next.
As these deployments mount consumer interest in the technology is being
piqued. ABI Research surveyed US consumers and found that 50% are
interested in a femtocell for their home. Vodafone in the UK, which
relaunched its femtocell offering under the ‘Sure
Signal’
brand in January, is seeing considerable consumer pick up. With more
and more services being rolled out globally and operators refining
their propositions, femtocells are set to become a mass market
phenomenon.
Also in this issue:
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Standards
and interoperability progress
March saw significant developments from the Forum in the key areas of
standards and interoperability. Firstly the world’s first
femtocell plugfest took place to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
3GPP femtocell standards in supporting interoperability between
femtocell access points and network equipment from different vendors.
The process, which extended over many months, culminating in the test
event itself, was organised in cooperation with ETSI (the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute) and had widespread vendor
support with over twenty companies participating. Plugfests are crucial
in order to ensure that there is consistent interpretation of standards
thereby providing operators and consumers with a richer ecosystem of
femtocell products, as well as facilitating economies of scale.
At the same time, we announced, alongside the 3GPP2 and the CDMA
Development Group (CDG) the publication of comprehensive specifications
for CDMA2000 femtocells. Building on a collaborative partnership
between the bodies this represents a major milestone for the deployment
of multi-vendor femtocell networks based on CDMA2000 radio access
technologies, including the first industry standardised capabilities
for the advanced Local and Remote IP Access capabilities that are the
foundation for femtozone services as pioneered in the Forum.
The specifications describe all aspects of a SIP/IMS-based femtocell
architecture for CDMA2000 networks and devices. They will allow the
integration of existing mobile devices, enhanced femtocell-aware mobile
devices, femtocell devices (FAPs), security gateways, and femtocell
convergence servers from multiple vendors. Interestingly, the
specifications support capabilities for new mobile devices that are
femto-aware. This includes providing features for improved battery
life, faster femtocell and macrocell system acquisition, improved
handoff between the femtocell and macrocell system, and femtozone
awareness for homezone services.
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