T-Mobile, Ubiquisys and Huawei Technologies have announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct femtocell Interoperability Testing at T-Mobile's labs over the next six months.
The interoperability tests will involve femtocells from both Ubiquisys and Huawei, which will communicate using the 3GPP's new Iuh standardised open interface. They will be connected to a Huawei Femto Gateway into T-Mobile's core network.
T-Mobile, Ubiquisys and Huawei say they are are committed to a scalable, multi-vendor femtocell market based on open standards, and the announcement is said to pave the way for operators to select standards-based femtocells and femto gateways from multiple vendors, in the knowledge that they will be fully compatible with each other and their core networks.
"T-Mobile has a long track record of practical innovation in the mobile industry. We are active members of the Femto Forum and the standards bodies, we have completed comprehensive femtocell trials with Ubiquisys and Huawei, and we have made a strategic investment in Ubiquisys. These IOT-tests will demonstrate for the first time that femtocell interoperability is becoming a reality," said Klaus-Jürgen Krath of T-Mobile.
"To reach their full market potential, femtocells must be more like mobile phones – interchangeable with the network they connect to," added Will Franks, CTO and Founder, Ubiquisys. "As a pioneer in this industry, we designed our femtocell from day one to connect to multiple femto gateways, ready for the introduction of a 3GPP standardised interface. We are delighted to be working with T-Mobile and Huawei to demonstrate the huge potential of femtocell interoperability."
Wan Biao, President of Huawei Wireless Product Line concluded, "We are very pleased to partner with T-Mobile and Ubiquisys for this IOT. This cooperation will be an important step for the whole femtocell industry ecosystem. Since 2005 Huawei began the research on femtocell and has become a leading E2E solution provider with deployments of femtocell commercial and trial networks across the world. 2010 will see the transition for femto to the mass market. Huawei will devote to the
standardization and maturity of the industry together with the operators and other vendors."