Femto Applications

Light reading published an article describing work that is going on to develop applications that run on femto cells. There is discussion that we will see femto application stores in the future.

Many of the applications are based on presence. One example is an application that will tell your room mate to feed the fish when the femto recognizes that the room mate has returned home from work. Other applications involve home control including remotely controlling the TV or home entertainment system, the home heating and cooling system, or other home appliances.

This is interesting; however, the home controller idea has not taken hold as yet. Maybe the femto is the missing element that will make it work.

Femto Cells Coming in the UK and the U.S.

Vodafone will introduce a 3G femto service in the UK on July 1, 2009 using an Alcatel-Lucent gateway. The femto service will be available under several plans that include no charge to a cost of $250 for the gateway and $8 per month.

ATT is expanding its current 3G femto technical trial with 200 users to a marketing trial where it will be sold at ATT stores in several cities. It plans a full rollout by the end of 2009.

The telcos have significant challenges in pricing and marketing femto cells. They will have to convince a broad market what femtos do and what their benefits are.

Broadband Providers "Not So Fair Use" Violates Net Neutrality

A couple of articles have been published recently describing how broadband providers are managing their traffic to their advantage and to the detriment of specific services. The BBC has published an article describing how BT throttles the bandwidth on its broadband service and degrades the quality of the BBC iPlayer at certain times of the day. The second is a Light Reading article describing the results of femto cell testing by Epitiro that shows that traffic management by broadand providers will negatively affect the performance of femto cells during peak traffic periods.

The BBC has identified a clause in BT's fair use policy that permits it to reduce the bandwidth on its broadband service to below 1 Mbps, which degrades the quality of the BBC iPlayer over the top IPTV service. The article cites an example of a user who has been affected by this policy.

The traffic analysis performed by Epitiro shows that some broadband providers are throttling IPSEC traffic so that it provides worse performance that best efforts Internet traffic at the same time.

These are the kind of situations that those promoting the Net Neutrality agenda are concerned about. In both cases the broadband providers are throttling the traffic of competitors. The BBC iPlayer competes with BT's BT Vision IPTV service. Femto cells will compete with the broadband provider's VoIP and POTS services. The broadband providers are building the case for Net Neutrality when they do this and will produce a regulatory reaction that they will not like at all.

Femto Cell Standards Complete

The 3GPP has published standards for femto cells listed in a release from the Femto Forum. The Broadband Forum also contributed to these standards. The new standards cover four main areas: network architecture; radio & interference aspects; femtocell management/provisioning and security.

These standards are based on the 3GPP UMTS protocols and extend them to support the needs of high-volume femtocell deployments. The new standard has also adopted the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 management protocol which has been extended to incorporate a new data model for femtocells developed collaboratively by Femto Forum and Broadband Forum members and published by the Broadband Forum as Technical Report 196 (TR-196).

Femto cells will be a key network element and will generate fundamental changes in how services are delivered and sold. This is an important start.

T-Mobile Says Mass Market Femtos Will Wait Until 2010

Light Reading published and article on a presentation by T-Mobile at the Mobile World Conference about its plans for femto cells. T-Mobile said that it will start with a controlled femto cell introduction in the middle of 2009. T-Mobile said that it will wait for Release 8, expected in 2010, before it makes a mass market introduction of femto cells.

T-Mobile tested femtocells from three different suppliers with 100 employees in Germany, about 90 employees in Poland, and about 60 employees in the UK. The trial in the UK is still on-going and will probably involve up to 100 participants.

Some of the problems discovered included limited mobile data rates due to the limitations of lower speed DSL broadband connections; issues with femtocell location detection; reduced battery standby time in terminals; and interference between the macro cell and femtocell.

Femto cells will be a significant development and have far reaching implications for mobile and broadband services.

Femto Cell Survey Article

Light Reading has published a nice survey article about the state of femto cell technology. Femto cells are likely to very important but are just getting off the ground now.

Femto Cell Interest in Spain and China

Telefonica's O2 mobile arm is planning a femto cell trial. It expects its femto cell commercial roll out to start ramping up in 2010.

picoChip Designs demonstrated its Chinese femtocell reference design in China today announced that femto startup Digimoc Telecom Technology (Shanghai) will use its chips and software designs to make femtocells based on the country's homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. The news is an indication that China Mobile is interested in the low-power home base stations, because it is the only Chinese operator that will deploy TD-SCDMA in the country.

This is the start of an important trend. Femto cells will off load mobile networks and blur the lines between wireless and wireline services. This will have a major effect on how services are offered in 2020.