Femto-based small cells could combine 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi in one box

There are now more 3G femtocells globally than 3G base stations, a report from Informa Telecoms and Media has revealed. The report, timed to coincide with the Femtocell World Summit being held in London, reveals that there are now more than 2.3 million 3G femtocells globally, compared to a total of 1.6 million macro 3G base stations.

Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum, said at a round-table ahead of the summit that the femtocell market has experienced significant recent growth of 60 per cent in the last quarter, taking the total number of commercial services operating globally up to 31. Forty-three operators have now publically committed to the technology, up from 34 at the end of the last quarter.

“Femtocells haven’t just passed a major milestone – it is now apparent that they are rapidly becoming less of a differentiator for service providers and more like an essential offering, said Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, in a statement. “Consumers are increasingly going to expect something that for a long time seemed impossible – near ubiquitous coverage for voice and high speed data. Femtocells make this a very real possibility.”

Saunders said that femtocells offer, “better and more consistent mobile data, particularly in the places that [people] care about – in their homes and their offices. They have changed the shape of mobile networks, they are no longer only delivered from large towers… and that change of shape is there for good”.

Another recent Informa report revealed that more than 60 per cent of operators believe that femto based small cells will be more important than macrocells for creating an effective LTE strategy.

Keith Day, vice president of marketing for Ubiquisys said that small cells self-organising abilities will enable operators to reduce their OPEX and will be key in bridging the gap between demand for data and the network’s ability to deliver it. “What we’re going to see is a new generation of small cell hot spots, typically tri-mode – I’m thinking 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi, all in the same box, all working harmoniously together.”

New API’s have also been published that should allow the femtocell to deliver new and innovative applications that are presence, context and location-sensitive aware.

Ubiquisys said its new Intel powered small cells will offer new levels of compute power for local caching

Ubiquisys, the femtocell vendor, has announced a partnership with chip manufacturer Intel to develop a new range of intelligent small cell base stations. The devices will feature Ubiquisys application software and will be powered by Intel architecture.

The small cells will be available in a variety of configurations and will be powered either by Intel Atom, Core, or Xeon processors depending on operator requirements. They will run WCDMA, LTE and wifi in the same box and according to Ubiquisys will bring new levels of compute power to the femtocell sector.

“What we’re talking about today is a completely new type of small cell”, Keith Day, VP Marketing of Ubiquisys told Telecoms.com. “The Intel powered cells have powerful computing capacity and abundant storage so they have the ability to do things that small cells simply haven’t been able to before.”

The cells are designed to cache local data enabling faster performance for end users. It will also help to significantly reduce the strain on operator networks, thus lowering their backhaul costs.

As an example Day described a scenario where a football stadium offered video highlights to all match attendees with the content stored locally on the small cells, rather than being pulled from the internet.

“If you imagine a deployment scenario of these hotspots under a single macro cell, what you have is a cloud of computing resources, which are bringing data and applications much closer to the point of use for mobile data users,” said Day.

“On this computing platform you could for example cache local data, such as a football stadium with an internet video feed, and rather than being taken from the web it would be cached locally. If you’re doing Twitter upload the cell can take care of all of that as well.

“Any localised data that otherwise would come from the internet onto the handset is transformed when you put a small cell in,” Day added. “It caches things locally so that’s it’s much closer to the user, and the distance from the small cell to the user’s handsets is also very, very small and the actual data rates are much, much higher – so the actual performance, per user, is much higher.”

Will Franks, CTO of Ubiquisys added, “What we’ve done here is to put significant compute power at the [network] edge – it’s not been done before.”

Ubiquisys said the Intel powered small cells would appear on the market in 2012.

According to a recent Informa Telecoms & Media survey, 61 per cent of responders said that they believed that small cells would be more important than macro cells for effective deployment of LTE networks.

The fourth annual LTE North America Conference takes place in Texas, US, November 8-9

Femtocells hit magic $100 price point

The femtocell crowd have hit the magic $100 price point for their gear, at which point the technology should become a mainstream consumer proposition.

Femto builder Ubiquisys said Tuesday that its Femto-Engine reference architecture had helped the sector reach the $100 industry price barrier, which may well pave the way for operator subsidised or ‘free’ to the consumer devices.

The Femto-Engine system has two main components – software and hardware blueprints and manufacturing support, giving hardware manufacturers a fast track to femtocell production. The company said it has already received its first 100,000 unit order using this model.

In related news, Japanese operator SoftBank has also announced that it would be offering femtocells to its subscribers for free.

SoftBank scored a world first 14 months ago, when it becomes the first service provider to launch 3G femtocells in a commercial capacity using kit from Ubiquisys and a supporting IMS core from NEC.

Femtocells are low power wireless access points used to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. They are targeted at the domestic market, intended to be used in the home and will typically be connected to the consumer’s fixed internet connection.

Femto backers unveil Android app

On Wednesday, femtocell supporters unveiled a multi desktop app for the Android platform that changes in proximity to a femtocell.

3G femtocell builder Ubiquisys has teamed up with software developer Intrinsyc to create a handset interface for Google’s Android platform that changes according to the user’s location.

UX-Zone incorporates femtocell presence triggers from the Ubiquisys FemtoApps initiative and switches over to the Android desktop when the handset automatically switches over from the outside network to the femtocell. The femto-themed home screen could display new icons for high bandwidth entertainment services like video streaming, social networking and home network integration, which would not be present when the user is on the macro network.

Ubiquisys also said that the UX-Zone application could be adopted by enterprises or businesses to provide a customised or themed home screen on Android gadgets when on campus or within a certain building or even a store.

Leaning on research released on behalf of the Femto Forum last month, backers of the technology claim that even with conservative assumptions, the customer lifetime value of a femtocell user increases by as much as 125 per cent or more.

Moreover, a European operator wanting to provide a reliable 2.5Mbps in-building service, could do so for €320 per household using femtocells, compared to the macro cellular network alone, which would cost €900.

At a time when carriers are looking at ways of managing the costs associated with the growing adoption of ‘unlimited’ mobile data packages, Signals Research Group reckons there to be considerable savings associated with offloading traffic via femtocells. The study found that the cost savings associated with offloading as little as 1.4GB of HSPA data or 1.3GB of EV-DO Rev A data per month via a femtocell would justify the operator offering a subscriber a free femtocell.

Femtocells: one size fits all

Standards body 3GPP, in collaboration with industry associations the Femto Forum and the Broadband Forum announced Tuesday the creation of the first femtocell standard. This, the organisations said, will allow for high volume production of standardised femtocells, and ensure interoperability between different vendors’ equipment. Femtocells are low range wireless access points operating in licensed spectrum, using domestic DSL or cable connections.

The new standard, which took just 12 months to complete, will form part of 3GPP’s Release 8. It covers network architecture, radio and interface, femtocell management/provisioning and security.

The standard incorporates the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 management protocol, already in use in fixed broadband networks and set top boxes. Extended to include a new data model for femotocells, TR-069 will enable operators to simplify deployment and enable automated remote provisioning, diagnostics checking and software updates, the organisations said.

“Our operator members have been insistent that the dozens of approaches to
integrating femtocells with mobile operators’ core networks had to be
filtered down to a single standard. This new standard is crucial in turning
the many femtocell operator trials taking place around the world into mass
market commercial deployments,” said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum.

Femto vendors ip.access and Ubiquisys leapt on the announcement, with ip.access unveiling updates to its Oyster 3G femotcell product, which the firm said took it closer to compliance with the newly released standard. Ubiquisys pledged to be the first vendor to deploy products fully compatible with the standard.

During the summer, web giant Google invested some $25m in femtocell maker Ubiquisys and now those devices are ready to be deployed.

The Ubiquisys femtocells, which are like mini mobile base stations deployed either in homes or on campus, are presently in mass production.

The femtos have completed “intense trials” with eight tier one operators around the world and is now ready for commercial use. Rumour has it that Orange is one of the UK trialists and low-power-GSM-license holders O2, BT and Carphone Warehouse/ Opal Telecom have all reportedly looked at femtos as a possible option for residential services.