Will Franks, founder and CTO of Swindon-based Ubiquisys, said Netgear will use his company’s reference design for femtocell base stations, comprising an RF chip from Maxim, a baseband modem chip from picoChip and Ubiquisys’ own software for radio management and provisioning, into the gateway, which it will begin trials with carriers in the fourth quarter. To our technology, they’ll add WiFi, DSL, VoIP ports, Ethernet, and USB, he said.
There are two lines of development for short-range base stations for indoor cellular coverage. Femtocell, of which Ubiquisys is a developer, works on 3G spectrum and is designed for home networking.
Picocells meanwhile are 2G devices for enabling mobile voice coverage in office buildings. Another UK company, IP.access, is a leading developer, and though the main thrust of the technology is voice, one company deploying picocells for in-building GSM, Private Mobile Networks, has been nudged into data services by its customers, having also extended the offering into GPRS connectivity. In addition, companies including Airvana and Global Wireless Technologies are developing femtocells for the CDMA market.
Franks said the next big push from Ubiquisys will be for the establishment of standards in the femtocell space. We inherit both the UMA and IMS standards, and next week we’ll hold the inaugural meeting of the Femto Forum to drive standards specifically for this sector, he said.
Our View
While dual-mode phones and the integration of cellular and WiFi connectivity have tended to hog the limelight when it comes to fixed-mobile convergence offerings, at this year’s 3GSM event there was a lot of activity around femtocells and picocells, with IMS and UMA vendors such as Tatara, Kineto and Sonus striking alliances with developers like Ubiquisys and IP.access.
There is no reason why these technologues could not also enable FMC, in that although they are merely small, shorter-range versions of regular base stations, carriers could link lower calling rates to them, so that calls made over the femtocells or picocells could cost less than those made when the phone is out and about.
