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June 03, 2009

Femto, WiMax Forums Team Up on Femtocells

By Amy Tierney
TMCnet Web Editor

The Femto Forum and WiMAX Forum are partnering to ramp up development of Femtocells (News - Alert) for mobile Wi-Fi networks.
 
The two groups announced they are working to create WiMAX (News - Alert) Femtocell Access Point specifications to address topics including end-to-end QoS, provisioning, network entry and authentication, power optimization, and mobility management. What’s more, the specs will also provide support emergency services, lawful intercept, and location-based services, the organizations said.
 
Femtocells are compact cellular access points that provide cellular service inside homes, small offices and other environments where cellular penetration is restricted. Essentially, femtocells are transceivers that are connected to a wired network , such as Internet broadband, that facilitates wireless digital interaction for mobile communication devices, TMC (News - Alert) reported. The device is designed is to improve signal quality.
 
The collaboration comes in response to the growing demand for broadband wireless access in homes and offices that allow both mobility and roaming. WiMAX operators and vendors agree that femtocell solutions are needed to increase the cell throughput per unit area to improve the quality of intra-cell links, particularly indoors, the groups said.
 
"Femtocells will provide a powerful new tool for WiMAX operators,” said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum (News - Alert), in a statement.” By significantly increasing the number of cells in a wireless network using femtocells, operators can deliver a dramatically better service than using macro networks alone. This partnership will not only enable vendor interoperability and increased economies of scale thereby driving competition- it will also help to support far-reaching new femtocell applications."
 
WiMAX operators are for femtocells to improve coverage and capacity while they retain quality of service management, said Ron Resnick (News - Alert), president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum in a statement.
 
“That is one of the great benefits of the WiMAX network,” Resnick said, whose organization defines and conducts conformance and interoperability testing to ensure different vendor systems work seamlessly with one another.
 
Femtocells are expected to take over mobile markets for indoor cell coverage, TMC reported. Revenue is will hit $400 million and equipment unit sales will reach 15 million units by 2013, according to InStat research. What’s more, Femtocells can spark substantial returns for operators by increasing the expected lifetime value of a subscriber across a range of user scenarios, another TMC report found.
 
As TMC reported earlier today, Motorola Inc. announced it has earned WiMAX Forum certification for its WiMAX access point, the WAP 400 for 3.5GHz.
 
But challenges still remain with the technology. IDC senior research analyst Joao da Silva told PC World that the market needs to grow to a size that allows vendors to get advantages of scale. In addition, interest in WiMax is large in markets without much DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) penetration, but the service is needed to connect femtocells to the operator network, the report said. However, countries like the U.S. and South Korea may benefit because interest for mobile WiMax is high, da Silva said.
 



Edited by Amy Tierney


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