Friday, 03 September 2010
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| Monday, 11 February 2008 | |
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Miniature base station mania mounts as
Everyone and his dog now appears to be hitting the femtocell trail. Following recent news from the Femto Forum, and from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Ubiquisys (click), a host of other vendors have made announcements about their progress with the low cost, low power in-door base station technology. The fact that these companies are all appearing at the giant GSMA Mobile World Congress in NETGEAR, for one, is upping its profile in the femtocell arena with the disclosure that it is collaborating with NEC Corporation to develop an integrated 3G access point that will be incorporated within NEC’s femtocell solution offering, and is working with NSN to certify NETGEAR’s Femtocell Voice Gateway (DVG834GH) for interoperability with NSN’s Femto Gateway. The networking company is also making available the DVG834GH – claimed to be the world’s first single-box solution that includes a residential gateway with integrated ADSL2+ modem, router, 10/100 wired LAN switch, 802.11g wireless access point, voice over IP (VoIP) and SPI double firewall - snazzed up with 3G femtocell technology from Ubiquisys Ltd. NETGEAR is further working with Kineto Wireless to achieve interoperability between the DVG834GH and the latter’s UMA Network Controller (UNC), a 3GPP standards-based femtocell RAN gateway. Kineto and NEC are themselves getting together with proposals to enable the mobile industry to quickly define a standard for supporting the deployment of femtocells. The joint proposal, based on the existing 3GPP Generic Access Network (GAN) standard, has been contributed to the 3GPP standards body as part of a femtocell study currently in progress. Kineto reckons that while lack of an agreed standard is not expected to delay the commercial deployment of femtocells, it is well understood in the femtocell industry that a formal standard is required before the market can achieve mass market success. The joint NEC and Kineto proposal relates to rapid standardisation of the 'Iu-over-IP'-based femtocell architecture, which enables operators to leverage the Iu-CS/PS interfaces into their existing mobile core network. Specifically, the NEC and Kineto proposal details how a fully defined 'Iu-over-IP' interface can quickly be achieved through a few minor extensions to the existing 3GPP GAN standard. The two companies believe this proposal represents the most viable option for 3GPP to reach a completed femtocell standard this year. "The mobile operator community has made it clear that a fully defined Iu-over-IP interface standard must be in place for the femtocell market to achieve mass market success," observes Anil Kohli, director, Global Femto Competence Centre for NEC Europe Ltd. "With three years of real world experience supporting large scale dual-mode handset services, the 3GPP GAN standard presents an ideal path for rapid femtocell standardisation." Next up France-headquartered Thomson, already collaborating with NSN, has now done a deal involving the global sourcing of Airvana’s Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) femtocell technology. As a result of this agreement, Thomson will use Airvana’s femtocell products in conjunction with its own residential gateways. Thomson has also launched an integrated femtocell gateway - the TG870 - which is designed to enable operators to deliver compelling multimedia services to the home network over any WCDMA 3G handset. Meantime, over in the Caveat emptor While the femtocell boosters can cite some attractive forecasts for the technology – Thomson, for example, instances market research firms ABI Research and Ovum respectively estimating this market could reach 10 to 12 million units by 2010 – other observers sound a more cautious note. “While femtocells are emotionally appealing to mobile operators, creating viable business models is challenging, if they add no more value than just improved coverage or lower-priced calls at home,” offers Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis. “Adding new and innovative ‘at home’ features for customers should broaden the opportunity significantly – although this requires much better integration with application-layer intelligence in the network”. Some analysts also give off mixed signals. Notwithstanding the Thomson citation, a recent ABI Research reading of the runes, for instance, warns that carriers should brace themselves for a three-to-four year programme of investment before they can expect profits from femtocells. According to ABI the femtocell industry is at a crossroads: carriers are now directing some of their attention away from the technical aspects of the solution and more towards the fundamental questions around how they can make money out of the technology and what their go-to-market strategies should look like if they are to obtain the best results. The ‘Femtocell Business Models’ report suggests that carriers need to be thinking more about the long term when formulating their femtocell strategies. “Our studies found that the margins carriers would expect to receive from backhaul OpEx savings and subscription revenues alone provide little incentive to adopt this technology,” says research director Stuart Carlaw. “It is imperative that carriers look to new value-added revenue streams, subscriber capture from other competitors, and innovative service offerings in order to make money out of this play. Voice alone will not be a long term winner.” John Williamson |
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