The world's first femtocell standard has been officially
published by
3GPP.
The hope is this will create a market of femtocells that are
interoperable between different vendors' access points and femto
gateways.
“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.
The new standard, which is the result of cooperation between 3GPP,
the Femto Forum and the Broadband Forum, forms part of 3GPP's
Release 8, and interdependent with
Broadband Forum
extensions to its Technical Report-069 (TR-069).
The new standard has adopted the Broadband Forum's TR-069
management protocol which has been extended to incorporate a new
data model for femtocells developed collaboratively by Femto Forum
and Broadband Forum members and published by the Broadband Forum as
Technical Report 196 (TR-196).
Suppliers are already adopting the standard, In Januray,
Ubiquisys announced its first
implementation.
"Operators can now deploy femtocells in the knowledge that their
vendors are working to the 3GPP standard." said Adrian Scrase, the
3GPP's Project Coordination Group Secretary.
In February, femtocell IC specialist
picoChip raised another $15m from its existing
investors taking its venture capital funding to $79m.