The Femto Forum, which was launched in July this year to expedite the standardization of femtocells, has extended its membership to include major operators and equipment vendors which are already actively participating in the Forum’s working groups. The Femto Forum has announced the following new members: Alcatel-Lucent, Aricent, Azaire Networks, Bharti Airtel, Bouygues Telecom, Carphone Warehouse Networks, Celcom, Continuous Computing, General Communication Inc, Kineto Wireless, Mapesbury Communications, Mavenir Systems, MobileOne, Motorola, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, Orascom Telecom, PCCW Mobile HK Limited, Pirelli Broadband Solutions, Rakon, Rogers Wireless, Reef Point, Sagem Communications, SerComm, Sonus Networks, Starent Networks, Telefónica O2, Thomson, Unwired Australia, UTStarcom and ZTE Corporation. These members join the seven original founding members: Airvana, ip.access, NETGEAR, picoChip, RadioFrame, Tatara and Ubiquisys. Thus taking the membership roster to 40.

Amongst the new members Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks and Telefónica O2 have been elected to the board.

“Since the launch of the Femto Forum on July 2nd this year, the development of the femtocell industry has continued its unrelenting pace – recently seeing the first commercial deployment. The simple proposition of lower costs, for both operators and consumers, combined with improved coverage and services is proving to be compelling,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. “The Forum’s work is now in full flow, with the major femtocell vendors and component providers actively working with operators to ensure that their products interoperate and meet the necessary demands to ensure successful widespread deployments.”

Meanwhile, Motorola Inc. has completed end-to-end testing of its 3G femtocell solution and has begun trialing its solution with a major European operator, the company announced.

“Motorola is pioneering the development of femtocell solutions that play a key role in realizing our vision of Seamless Mobility,” said Joe Cozzolino, corporate vice president and general manager Motorola Home & Networks Mobility EMEA. “Leveraging expertise from across the Motorola organization, we offer a fully integrated and tested end-to-end solution, based on open standard interfaces, which includes a range of femtocell customer premises equipment (CPE) and 3G devices, a core network concentrator, systems integration services and a CPE management solution.”

“In Europe, 30 to 40% of the cellular traffic is generated from inside the home. Femtocells provide a more efficient way for operators to manage traffic generated indoors, compared to the outdoor macrocells of the public cellular infrastructure,” commented Vincent Poulbere, principal analyst, Ovum. “In Western Europe, we forecast that 12 million femtocells will be deployed in 2010 rising to 17 million in 2011.”

RSS    Save to Del.icio.us  Digg This