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The femtocell is moving up and down the scale, with Picochip recently envisaging a base station shrunk down onto an USB modem, and others trialling outdoor versions that blur the lines with carrier picocells. The latest product from UK femto pioneer ip.access is somewhere in between those extremes, targeted at small and medium enterprises.

The S Class offering claims to have the plug-and-play simplicity of a home femtocell, but to approach the functionality of an enterprise picocell in key respects such as security and user load. It supports up to eight concurrent users and so is suited to a company with up to 50 staff. It can also be configured for open access, and for two-way handover with the macro network, like a conventional picocell.

Andy Tiller, SVP of marketing at the Cambridge-based firm, told TotalTelecom that the S Class was already being trialled by an unnamed, non-UK operator.

Also on the femto front, Ixia has announced a full testing system, IxCatapult, which can address both access points and gateways in an integrated way. “The idea of a femtocell being a self-organizing network has to become a reality if operators are to deploy the technology en masse,” said Joe Zeto, market development manager at the company.

Ixia has applied its tools for testing and measuring the user experience of the network, which it offers for mobile networks and backhaul and for routers and switches, to femtocells. Zeto said the six key criteria for a good femto deployment are “scalability, security, ease of use, interoperability, mobility and quality of experience”.

“Operators really want to differentiate with better service quality, so they have to pay attention to the aforementioned big-six challenges if they are to have the best performing network and satisfied customers,” Zeto told ConnectedPlanet.

Ixia is also collaborating with Picochip and Continuous Computing to validate the latter’s LTE and femtocell software solutions, running on Picochip’s hardware.

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