Both parties hail “milestone” for femto
Ubiquisys and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) have announced they will have a femtocell solution available in the first quarter of 2011 featuring standardised Iuh and TR-196 interfaces between Ubiquisys Femtocell Access Points and NSN Gateways and Femto Management Systems.
IuH is the standard protocol that the femtocell community has decided upon to support integration between femtocells and the network gateways that control and aggregate traffic from femtocells into the core network. TR-196 is the data model, expanded from the Brodband Forum’s TR-069 protocol, used to manage femtocells. Standardised interfaces make femtocells independent of the network systems they connect to, enabling mobile operators to offer their customers a range of femtocell devices with specific capabilities, from a variety of vendors.
There was a Femto Forum organised plugfest in March 2010, in which access point and gateway products were tested against each other, and this is now the first end to end, standards compatible femtocell solution on the market, according to Ubiquisys.
Keith Day, VP of Marketing for Ubiquisys, said “This is a big milestone, as this is the first standards-based, real product that has been tested for use. IuH has been a hyped topic that has faded a bit, but it is still the biggest carrier item in terms of driving the adoption of femtos. Tested, standards compatible equipment means operators can make an independent choice of femtocell access point vendor and gateway provider.”
Timo Hyppölä, head of 3G Femto product management for NSN said, “Bringing to market what we believe is the world’s first 3GPP standard compliant femto system, together with a well-known femto access point pioneer, Ubiquisys, marks an important milestone for us. This is a notable goal achieved in terms of the industry work done towards an open ecosystem where we are co-operating with a number of partners in the industry. In addition, this marks a kick-off for a whole new era of standard based femtocells; intercompatible across company borders. I think it is of note for the industry that the femto standard, so much discussed, is now turning “live”, or into reality, in product offerings.”
NSN did previously have a partnership with Airvana in which NSN would market the gateways and Airvana its UMTS access points, but Airvana pulled out of that alliance before recently halting work on UMTS femtos altogether. So could this announcement be seen as NSN re-entering the market with an end-to-end solution?
Hyppölä said, “The announcement does not mark a change in the Nokia Siemens Networks 3G femto strategy. We remain committed to standards and co-operate with a number of partners to drive an open Femto ecosystem, based on a standards-compliant Femto network architecture concept. It is important for us to create (Iuh/TR-196) interoperability across a range of access points.”
Day said, “We will carry out interop work with other vendors as well, and you will see more and more of that. It opens up the value for operators in a femto deployment across the network part, the integration part and on the device side. We will also see many more variants of femto hardware as operators are freed from the idea of just one kind of access point.”
Ubuiquisys and NSN have had an existing relationship since 2008, Hyppölä pointed out.