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As the first femtocell standards are published jointly by the 3GPP and Broadband Forum this week, AT&T looks to be kicking off customer trials of its devices, which would suggest a likely commercial launch date in the summer.

The US cellco recently issued a firmware update to make its most important handset, the iPhone, compatible with its femtocell, called 3G Microcell. This is sourced from UK-based ip.access as part of a broader deal with Cisco. And this week it started to email customers who were chosen last month to trial the unit, outlining the rules, which include a nominal $200 cash payment along with the option to keep the equipment after the end of the trial, which is expected to run from next week until June 9.

There was considerable focus on femtocells at last week's CTIA Wireless event, with much of the buzz surrounding CDMA devices, no doubt with an eye on Verizon, which is planning its own roll-out soon. It is likely to use the first generation design, Samsung Airave, that is also offered by Sprint, but Samsung has far more ambitious products in the pipeline. The Korean firm showed off its new femtocell control system in Las Vegas - this provides management communication, mobile hand-off and other standard features.

The new femtocell standard covers four main areas - network architecture; radio & interference aspects; femtocell management and plug-and-play provisioning; and security, the most recently finalized element.

On the architecture side, the new Iuh technology for linking femtocells to the core is based on existing 3GPP UMTS protocols and extends to networks that could have millions of base stations in them. For management, the basis of the new standard is the TR-069 management protocol, which now has a femtocell data model called TR-196. This aims to support simplified operator deployment and automated remote provisioning, diagnostics and software updates - all bringing the femtocell, from the carrier's point of view, closer to the norms of wireline broadband customer equipment.

The new security features combine IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange v2) and IPsec (IP Security) protocols to authenticate the operator and subscriber and then guarantee the privacy of the data exchanged.

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