June
2008
In
this issue
Calling all members!
Our 5th Plenary is taking
place 25-27 June 2008 at the Sheraton Skyline Hotel near London's
Heathrow Airport. If you haven't registered already - and more than 100
delegates are already on board - registration for members is
now open.
Last week's announcement of a standard for femto cells took a lot of
people by surprise. How
did it happen so fast, and how important will it be? More>
White paper available NOW
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A
year in the life
Simon Saunders, Chair, Femto Forum
On the eve of the Femto Forum’s first anniversary it seems appropriate to sum up our achievements so far
and touch on what remains to be done. In retrospect it hardly seems
possible that the Forum launched last summer with only seven members
– all vendors. Today,
we number eighty-three, including the world’s largest
operators and vendors as well as the innovative start-ups that gave
birth to this fledgling industry.
What we initially lacked in numbers we certainly made up for with
ambition. Many of the objectives of the Forum, especially
agreement around a standard for femtocell network integration, seemed
extremely optimistic considering the diversity of available solutions.
I must admit that the level of cooperation that members have displayed
has exceeded my own expectations. Testament to this is 3GPP's
completion of its feasibility study, endorsing the concept of
femtocells as viable within the standards, followed by its commitment
to standardise the Iuh interface built around work done
in the Forum and the commitment by vendor members to adopt a single
common approach (per cellular standard) to femtocell integration.
Beyond this the Forum has built relationships with key industry bodies
(including 3GPP, 3GPP2, DSL Forum and GSMA) and also put together a
strong response to health & safety and regulatory issues.
All the Forum’s
major achievements have been well covered in
the major telecoms and technology media. In fact
we’ve even gone beyond this with coverage in The Financial
Times and The
Economist. The pace shows no signs of letting up
as over the next few months we’ll be announcing progress in
other crucial areas.
So what’s next? There still remains plenty of work to be done
in the working groups around network integration, RF and the regulatory
environment. But perhaps more importantly, over the next 12
months femtocells are going to be deployed by multiple operators around
the world. It is crucial that the Forum takes the story beyond the
telecoms industry and begins to support deployments for the general
public.
So clearly there’s plenty to do. But, if this
year is as productive as our first then we’ll have made huge
strides towards the realisation of an exciting vision that's
increasingly
shared by key players right across our industry. more
stories>
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