NEC announced today at MWC that it will build the first Norwegian femtocell network for Network Norway.
Network Norway will provide its enterprise customers with NEC's femtocell access point to plug into their broadband router. In addition, NEC is providing Network Norway with the NEC femto gateway and access point management systems which can aggregate and connect thousands of access points to Network Norway's core network.
Arild E. Hustad, chief executive officer, Network Norway said, "Our customers demand mobile services with excellent, stable quality. Poor indoor coverage has for a long time been an issue that needed to be solved. With NEC's femtocell solutions we are now able to carry out a pilot to commercially and technically test state-of-the-art phone services solving the problem with indoor coverage, as well as a continuous, high-speed broadband service."
NEC's low-power femtocell access point will provide a dedicated 3G network indoors for personal use by Network Norway's customers, eradicating the "no bar" coverage that mobile phone users experience within buildings. The dedicated coverage will enable Network Norway to offer those customers who have poor indoor coverage to access their favourite mobile media services on their handsets and 3G-enabled net books.
"Mobile operators are under constant pressure to offer a competitive service; femtocell is a way they can differentiate with the indoor five-bar coverage required to access capacity-intensive applications that consumers want," said Fredrik Tumegard, CEO, NEC Scandinavia. "By providing a femtocell service to its customers Network Norway is leading where we believe other mobile operators will soon follow."