Plugfest reveals new femtocell supply chain

MOST READ
LATEST NEWS

Compare broadband and
mobile phone deals at Top10.com

EVENTS

4G World 2010 October 18 - 21, Chicago

4GWE Conference, Oct 4-6, Los Angeles

The Location Business Summit USA, 14-15 September, Crowne Plaza, San Jose

Advertize your telecoms job

JOBS

Mobile Industry & Technology Journalist - freelance

HOT TOPICS

Plugfest reveals new femtocell supply chain

Reference designs and ODMs will be key to lower costs and rapid roll-out

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 30 March, 2010

READ MORE: Standards | Testing/Certification | Femtocell

Last week saw the Femto Forum's first plugfest, with over 20 companies participating. They demonstrated multivendor interoperability between different femto access points, network gateways, security gateways and other elements, using the Iuh standard, now part of the 3GPP Release 8 specs.

The mixture of firms taking part indicates the very different ecosystem that surrounds femtocells, compared to conventional base stations. Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens and Huawei were there, to be sure, though no Ericsson of course, since the market leader remains strangely ostrich-like, appearing to hope that if it ignores these tiny, low margin base stations they will go away and leave its macrocell world intact. It is always important when tier one vendors go public with support for interoperability initiatives, since it is in their interest to tie operators into their end-to-end solutions for as long as possible. The presence of firms like Huawei, then, indicates that the carriers will not tolerate any attempt to keep femtocells proprietary, thereby adding to risk and cost.

But more notable were the less obvious base station suspects - Cisco, well positioned to turn its Linksys economies of scale and its all-IP core credentials to good use in femtos; and several representatives from the Taiwanese ODM community, whose economics are essential to the femtocell business case. Among these were the giants Alpha Networks and Askey, and there were also Korean specialists C&S and Contela.

The ODMs and many smaller manufacturers from the consumer spaces will rely on reference designs, and Rupert Baines, head of marketing both for picoChip and the Femto Forum, points out: "It is a sign of the maturing of the market that reference designs are solid enough to participate in a plugfest." picoChip was there with its own reference system, working with partners such as Continuous Computing and supplying many of the hardware players. Also taking part were the established femto specialists, Ubiquisys, ip.access and Airvana; plus Ablaze Wireless, Acme Packet, Continuous Computing, Genband, IntelliNet, Kineto, NEC, Node-H, Technicolor. It was all coordinated by TRaC Global.

"The fact that the plugfest was carried out so quickly after the completion of the 3GPP standard is testament to the industry's support for standardized femtocell access points and network equipment. This process will ultimately allow operators to multisource the technology as they do with mobile handsets today," said Natasha Tamaskar, chair of the Femto Forum's IoT Initiative. "This plugfest represents a crucial step towards the Femto Forum's vision of a fully open interoperable femtocell ecosystem."