T-Mobile invests in (another) femtocell developer

Paul Rasmussen — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:32:13 -0400

Indications that European operators want to accelerate the deployment of 3G femtocells comes with the news that T-Mobile has joined with others to invest in an Israeli-based baseband developer. T-Mobile has joined with venture capital funds to invest US$12 million in Percello, a fabless start-up that claims its chip is the first dedicated to the 3G femtocell market.

Percello's CEO, Shlomo Gadot, was upbeat about its new PRC6000 chip. "It offers the highest level of integration, the most advanced features and the most efficient power consumption at the best price." He added that the SoC PRC6000 device supported all femtocell backhaul functions such as timing and security, was compliant with the 3GPP R7 baseline, and was capable of delivering downlink speeds of 21.6Mbps and 5.76Mbps in the uplink.

However, other developers might question some of these assertions--such as whether the design was complete, where it might be produced and when?

However T-Mobile seemed pleased with its investment: "The baseband chip that Percello is developing is the most critical component relating to quality and mass-market price points. Its team has a strong track record and we welcome their involvement in strengthening the growing femtocell ecosystem," said Klaus-Jurgen Krath, VP of radio network engineering and quality for T-Mobile International.

The new investors said that the funds would be used primarily to complete product development of the PRC6000 chip and to initiate sales and marketing activities. Earlier this week, Percello announced that it planned to use CEVA-Teaklite-III DSP core technology to help develop femtocell baseband chipsets.

For more on this story:
- go to EE Times and Globes Online

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Femtocell success reliant on handset innovations, claims new study

Paul Rasmussen — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:23:07 -0400

The hype surrounding the mass deployment of femtocells has been doused with cold water by a new study into the need for handset vendors to quickly transform their devices to support the technology. According to the report, published by Research & Markets (R&M), the femtocell industry is basing its optimism on the notion that subscribers will use their cell phones differently when in range of femtocells. There will be different applications and behavioural patterns when people are at home--perhaps content backups, podcasts or even advertiser-sponsored TV programming. The mobile phone may need to be linked to the TV, PC, HiFi or other items of domestic technology, claims R&M.

However, the report states that, while handsets will work with femtocells, they are not optimised to support this new 'in home' activity. The phone needs to be aware of the femtocell, ideally both in the radio and the application platform. But changing how the handset industry approaches this challenge could take 2-3 years--given that it takes this amount of time to implement new handset architecture, and around the same time before new cell phone technology reaches a broad range of devices.

R&M identified other issues that the femtocell industry should be aware of:

In dense deployments of femtocells, handsets can spend too much time and power attempting to connect at locations that are not their own "home zone."
The new 3GPP Release 8 specifications contain various modifications to enable handsets to work better with femtocells, but the first R8-compliant phones will likely be shipped at the end of 2010.
The usage of handsets on femtocells may identify unexpected side-effects, relating to faster/cheaper data connections. This may impact elements of design such as memory allocation and power management.
Various suggestions have been made for ‘femto-zone' services--but there is no standardised way for handset applications to know they are attached to a femtocell.

However, the study also pointed to some new opportunities that femtocells could have for operators, namely the generation of new revenue streams from advertisers and other third parties by enabling the provision of 'at home' services via femtocells.

R&M claimed that there could be a demand for at least 48 million femto-aware handsets to be sold to femtocell owners in 2013. However, with more optimistic forecasts, and especially if shared femtocell models become popular, there could potentially be a demand for up to 300 million femto-aware handsets per year in 2013.

For more on this story:
- go to Marketwatch

Related stories:
Femto Forum, NGMN Alliance unite for femtocells. Femtocell story
Femtocells--big market, bigger questions. Femtocell editorial

3gpp

T-Mobile invests in (another) femtocell developer

Femtocell success reliant on handset innovations, claims new study