As 2011 draws to a close and most of us get ready for a much needed festive break, it is time to reflect on what has been a breakthrough year in the femtocell and small cell industry. Just a couple of weeks ago, a wide range of industry players congregated at Femtocells Americas. This year saw yet more key operators new to femto presenting at the event, including Mosaic Telecom, Telcel, and GCI. At the same event, small cell pioneer SoftBank of Japan revealed how it used a combination of small cells and satellite tech to restore mobile comms after the devastating tsunami in March.
The Mosaic Telecom Homecell
The year has been full of interesting deployments, partnerships and collaborations. See below for our list of some of this year’s industry highlights:
- In January, Ubiquisys kicked off the year by introducing the world’s first attocell – a personal USB-powered femtocell, which was demonstrated at Mobile World Congress.
- Also at February’s Mobile World Congress, Informa revealed that deployments had more than doubled in the previous 12 months, with residential services representing the overwhelming majority. Device partner SerComm unveiled its complete range of 15 design-to-order femtocells for residential, enterprise, rural and metro settings.
- Broadcom’s acquisition of Percello last year was part of a trend, as a number of major silicon vendors ramped-up their activity in the small cell market. These included Texas Instruments, with whom Ubiquisys is developing dual mode 3G/4G small cells, and Intel, which is designing a future powered by new compute platforms in both cloud RAN and EdgeCloud® environments.
- 2011 was also the year of free femtocell offers, enabled by the falling costs of femtocell technology, in turn driven by increasing volumes and new efficient production models. Free femtocells were originally pioneered by SoftBank and then subsequently offered by SFR in France. SFR has proved to be the industry trailblazer by providing a free femtocell to all its customers with no contract strings attached, resulting in a very happy set of customers. It also used a unique femtocell design, acting either as a clip-on USB accessory to the Neufbox ADSL gateway, or as a standalone unit.
- Network Norway has successfully provided hundreds of enterprise customers with a premium mobile service based on a self-organising network (SON) of enterprise femtocells, the first and only SON deployments of their kind anywhere in the world.
- In fact, 2011 proved to be the year that enterprise femtocells took off when it was revealed that almost a third of femtocell deployments now include enterprise offerings, demonstrating that operator interest is not limited to residential services alone. Orange France unveiled a fully managed femtocell service for business customers and Verizon, and more recently Sprint, announcing enterprise femtocell offerings.
- At the end of June, research revealed that the number of 3G femtocells deployed now outnumbers conventional 3G base stations. The report went on to disclose that there are now in excess of 2.3 million 3G femtocells globally compared to 1.6 million 3G macrocells. A more recent report reveals that a number of operators have passed 100,000 units deployed, including Sprint which has rolled out 500,000 units and expects to exceed 1 million by 2013. Vodafone UK, Japan’s Softbank and France’s SFR have also surpassed 100,000 deployed units.
- In July Gemtek, another leading high volume manufacturer, announced that it was developing a range of femtocell-powered small cells based on Ubiquisys femto-engine technology.
- September saw Ubiquisys demonstrate with partner Nokia Siemens at the PT/Expo in Beijing, part of a rapid increase in commercial activity in China.
- In October Tecom launched a new range of small cells powered by Ubiquisys femto-engine software and systems. These cover residential, enterprise, public space and outdoor environments.
- Informa Telecoms & Media announced in a recent report for the Femto Forum that there are currently 37 commercial femtocell deployments in 23 countries worldwide. Another 15 operators have committed to rolling out the small cells, with Regional US operator Mosaic Telecom being the latest to deploy them.
Expect plenty more news in 2012, building on the developments we have seen in 2011. Feel free to leave a comment below if you’ve spotted anything else interesting that’s going on in the industry.
