Femto Forum launches standards initiative
30 January 2008
Femto Forum launches standards initiative
The Femto Forum, an industry body promoting femtocell technology, kick started an initiative on Wednesday designed to harmonise the integration of femtocells into mobile core networks.
The Forum said that the growing interest in femto technology has fostered an environment in which there are many different, and sometimes proprietary, methods of integrating many different types of femtocell. And while this is not holding up the commercial deployment of femtocells, the initiative aims unite these different approaches in the longer term and set the stage for the development of future standards.
At the Forum's next plenary meeting in March, a variety of approaches to femtocell network integration will be put forward by members. Based on these proposals, the Forum aims to develop a framework, which will enable vendors to respond quickly to operator demands for interoperability, and will provide a platform from which members can advance the best approaches into the relevant standards bodies.
The Femto Forum itself is not a standards making body.
Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum, said a reference architecture has already been agreed upon, which will be used to provide a consistent basis for comparison between the different network integration options.
"Femtocells have got off to a flying start and more deployments will take place in the near future but it is crucial that all the players in the market begin to plan together for the longer term. Operators have been vocal about their desire for a more unified approach to femtocell network integration as the scale of deployments increases. This programme represents the first time the femtocell community has come together to forge a future technology path through consensus," said Saunders. "This conjoined approach will not only encourage interoperability and increase economies of scale thereby helping keep costs low, but it will also help to support far-reaching new femtocell applications."
Meanwhile, a number of new members including BT, Cellcom Israel, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, mobilkom austria, Samsung, Telecom Italia and Vodafone, have joined the forum, bringing the member base to 58.
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