Mobile World Congress = Femtocell Annual Checkup

Femto Hub Blog (Feb 9 2009) Network Equipment Vendors

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  1. Mobile World Congress = Femtocell Annual Checkup By Josh Adelson

    Much of the femtocell industry is consumed with feverish last-minute preparations for Mobile World Congress, which starts a week from today in Barcelona.  MWC has become the annual event of record for the mobile industry; as such it provides a useful periodic snapshot for observing the state of the femtocell business.

    At MWC 2007 femtocells were mostly kept behind closed doors.  By 2008 femtocells had come to center stage, and were arguably one of the top themes of the show alongside LTE and the iPhone.  Most femtocell vendors including ourselves had visible moderate-sized stands, and femtocells could be seen on display in at the stands of larger telecom vendors Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, and Nokia Siemens Networks.

    In retrospect, MWC2008 was a sort of pre-commercial high point.  Following the enthusiasm generated there, the event organizers kicked into high gear, scheduling conferences around the world with names like “Femtocell Deployment World Summit”.  When those deployments failed to materialize on schedule, the industry analysts found their own cautionary groove.  By December hype cycle maven Gartner Group proclaimed femtocells to be at the “peak of inflated expectations”.

    In spite of—or perhaps in response to—the nay-sayers, the industry seems to have taken a pause and re-grouped.  There is significant progress to report on all the big questions that consumed conference panels in 2008.  Standards for core network interface have been defined and are well on their way toward ratification.  Macro network interference has been systematically studied, and is now considered to be a manageable issue.  Product cost is being seen more realistically in the context of product life-cycle, and more large silicon vendors are jumping in, indicating both a source of cost reduction and an expectation of high unit volumes.  The Femto Forum has hired an analyst firm to conduct a formal femtocell business case.

    What will MWC 2009 bring?  One step forward for the industry is its own formal presence: the Femto Forum and GSMA have teamed up to create the “FemtoZone” – a stand in Hall 2 that will feature will feature public presentations from operators and vendors, as well an analyst presentation femtocell business case.

    All of this positive progress comes against a headwind of global economic slowdown, so we should expect fewer attendees overall, and less of 2008’s jubilance.  But for those who do come to Barcelona, MWC 2009 will hopefully be remembered as one in which substantive femtocell progress was demonstrated.

    Josh Adelson is Airvana's Director of Product Marketing

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