London – The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, has extended its membership to include major operators and equipment vendors which are already actively participating in the Forum’s working groups. Amongst the new members Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks and Telefónica O2 have been elected to the board.
The Femto Forum today 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.
“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.”
Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections.
The Femto Forum works to promote the uptake of femtocell technologies through open standards, market education and ecosystem development. The Forum has established four working groups which address the key issues affecting the femtocell industry: Regulatory; Network and Interoperability; Radio and Physical Layer; and Marketing and Promotion. The working groups have worked over the past three months to agree the key issues to be addressed to ensure the rapid and effective deployment of femtocells to support a wide variety of customer propositions and operator business models.
The regulatory group identifies regulatory benefits and potential issues pertaining to public policy in various strategic markets around the world and works with regulators to ensure a benign environment for rapid and efficient femtocell deployment. The network and interoperability group is promoting standardised requirements, architectures and interfaces for integrating femtocells into the network core and ensuring multi-vendor interoperability. The radio and physical layer group is developing standardised RF interfaces, clarifying the various capability classes of femtocell and examining interactions with outdoor cells. The marketing group is looking at how the industry should best position femtocells within the industry and to the wider public, build usage cases, agree common terminology and manage any potential concerns.
About The Femto Forum
Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. The Femto Forum (www.femtoforum.org) has been set up to promote the wide-scale adoption of femtocells. The Forum will support and drive the adoption of industry wide standards and common architectures to enable the widespread adoption & deployment of femtocells by operators around the world. It will direct and implement a multi-faceted marketing campaign to raise the profile, drive technology development & deployment and to promote the potential of femto solutions among industry stakeholders, journalists, analysts, regulators, special interest groups, standards bodies and consumers.
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