NetGear first with 3G femtocell/router/modem/WiFi access point

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 07 February 2008 04:41

Business IT - Technology

The Netgear Femtocell Voice Gateway will be demonstrated publicly for the first time at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 11-14, 2008. According to Netgear, the product (DVG834GH) is "the world's first single-box solution that includes a comprehensive residential gateway with integrated ADSL2+ modem, router, 10/100 wired LAN switch, 802.11g wireless access point, VoIP, SPI double firewall, and 3G femtocell technology from Ubiquisys Ltd."

Netgear has evaluation units available now for operator testing and expects to have commercial availability during the first half of 2008. It has given no indication of pricing. The femtocell component is Ubiquisys' ZoneGate product.

The Netgear Ubiquisys tie up is the latest in a string of partnerships in the femtocell industry, but most have been between femtocell makers and cellular infrastructure companies. Nokia Siemens Networks and Ubiquisys have just announced plans to cooperate in the marketing and sales to cellular operators of joint femtocell systems. ZoneGate supports industry standard interfaces and also conforms to Nokia Siemens Networks' Femto Gateway open architecture. Nokia Siemens Networks announced in December 2007 a similar partnership with another femtocell maker, RadioFrame.

This week also The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, launched a programme to help harmonise the integration of femtocells into mobile core networks, saying that operator demand to launch femtocells quickly has led to the development of many different methods for integrating potentially millions of femtocells into the network core. "Although this is not holding up the commercial deployment of femtocells, this programme will help unite these different approaches in the longer term and set the stage for the development of future standards," it said.

The Femto forum has added a number of significant new members, who are already active in its working groups. They include: Acme Packet, AudioCodes, BT, Cellcom Israel, Cisco, Ericsson, Genband, Huawei, KTL, mobilkom austria, NewStep Networks, NXP Semiconductors, Samsung, SaskTel, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia and Vodafone. They take the forum's membership to 58 companies. A full list of members is available at www.femtoforum.org .