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The battle for the femtocell market is starting in earnest at the world's largest mobile phone show in Barcelona this week.

While start-ups such as Swindon-based Ubiquisys and Cambridge-based ip.access are slugging it out at the Mobile World Congress with home basestations for 3G phones based on the same chip from PicoChip, others are catching up.

PicoChip has also teamed up with telecoms equipment company Continuous Computing to provide a complete package, including the femtocell and network equipment.

Analyst Idate predicts 10 million 3G femtocells will ship worldwide in 2010, rising to 18 million in 2011. Google-backed Ubiquisys announced a deal last week with Nokia Siemens Networks, while Cisco-backed ip.access has its 2G picocells in 30 live networks and is pitching its Oyster 3G picocell against the ZoneGate from Ubiquisys.

In what PicoChip is calling "a level of collaboration not yet seen in the marketplace", the Trillium software from Continuous for high-speed HSPA 3G data will be integrated with PicoChip's PC2808 software and PC202 picoArray single-chip processor.

"As the femtocell market takes off, our collaboration with Continuous Computing comes at the perfect time to solve the protocol stack complexity challenges confronting the industry," said Guillaume d'Eyssautier, president and CEO at PicoChip.

"Our PC2808 baseband code is well-proven. Combining that with Trillium enables the first highly-integrated, low-cost femtocell solution with robust, proven software and architecture on the market."

See also: Motorola, Netgear demo femtocells at Mobile World Congress