The femtocell industry has set up its own trade association to develop open standards to link GSM and 3G mobile phones to the network from basestations in the home.
The Femtocell Forum launched on Monday this week [July 2] with seven founder members and another 60 companies including the top five global mobile phone operators, said Simon Saunders, an independent wireless consultant and chairman of the forum.
The seven founders include UK femtocell makers Ubiquisys in Swindon and ip.access in Cambridge as well as US maker Radioframe, chip supplier PicoChip in Bath and equipment maker Netgear. Other equipment makers, as well as network software and applications developers have also joined the Forum, he said.
The Forum’s aim is to work across both hardware and software standards bodies to develop and promote open standards. It is also planning to sponsor ‘plug fests’ to demonstrate interoperability of equipment.
“Initial working groups will concentrate on pre-competitive standards-focused issues including radio planning and control, device provisioning and management, and device to network standardisation,” said the Forum.
The Forum will be open to other potentially competing technologies such as WiFi. “We have already seen announcements of femtocells combined with WiFi so that you get the best of both worlds and there is a lot of cross fertilisation that we expect,” said Saunders. “We already have NetGear and they are an example of that and more in that space would be anticipated.”
Research firm ABI Research claimed that all of the major mobile operators are undergoing trials of femtocell products to add capacity and coverage to their networks.
“However, the introduction of open standards will be critical in enabling an economy of scale that will better enable the OEM and semiconductor communities to meet very aggressive price points and stimulate the market,” said ABI.
Femtocell Forum