Regional U.S. telecom carrier, Cellcom has teamed up with Airvana (News - Alert) and Taqua to help smaller operators in North America offer high-speed wireless service using femtocells.




The trio have developed FemtoCloud platform, which they want to use for offering FemtoCloud-as-a-service to CDMA operators in the United States.


Most of the small mobile carriers have so far been unable to set up femtocells in large number because of high cost of building the femtocell core network and corresponding system integration.


Cellcom says it will leverage its existing small cell core to deliver a FemtoCloud solution to small operators.


Using Cellcom’s platform, rural wireless operators can deploy femtocells and other small cells, including pico cells, without much expense on infrastructure.


"We are actively seeking carriers to be part of the first deployment of this service,” said Rob Riordan, executive vice president at Cellcom. “There is tremendous demand for capacity on cellular networks today. I don't see how carriers can survive without an economic deployment of small cells."

Cellcom is gearing up to demonstrate the solution in the CTIA (News - Alert) trade show, slated to take place this week in New Orleans, La.


What is exciting about this platform is that it is flexible enough to develop newer services such as 4G LTE (News - Alert) and Presence, according to Cellcom.


"Small cells are just as important to regional and rural carriers as they are for the large national carriers," said Frederick Reynolds, VP of marketing at Taqua (News - Alert) LLC. "The FemtoCloud solution can be a very cost-effective way to fill coverage gaps, increase capacity and deliver wireless services in areas that historically were too hard or costly to reach."


Chelmsford, Mass.-based Airvana is a founding member of the femtocell industry body, the Femto Forum (News - Alert), and has played an active role in the development of femtocell standards.




Edited by Braden Becker