Cisco set to stir up the femtocell market

By Stuart Corner
Thursday, 24 January 2008 07:15

Opinion and Analysis

Details of Cisco's investment in ip.access have not been announced, but Thomson must now be worried about the future of this relationship. Cisco's long term goal is clearly to incorporate femtocell technology into its growing portfolio of home networking technologies and an acquisition of ip.access would be one way to do this.

The femtocell market at present is characterised by the major telco network manufacturers on one hand, and a number of small start-ups on the other. In June 2007, ABI Research published a femtocell top 10: Ubiquisys (number one); ip.access; RadioFrame Networks; Alcatel-Lucent; Ericsson; Huawei Technologies; Samsung; AirWalk Communications; Airvana; 2Wire.

In mid 2007 Airvana, ip.access, Netgear, picoChip, RadioFrame, Tatara and Ubiquisys to promote uptake of femtocell technologies through open standards, market education and ecosystem development Significantly none of the major cellular infrastructure vendors (Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent) participated.

Similar deals to that between ip.access and Thomson announced at around the same time in early 2007 included one between NEC and Ubiquisys to deliver femtocell solutions worldwide. NEC will offer the Ubiquisys ZoneGate femtocell as part of its 3G home gateway product portfolio.

Also, Tatara Systems and 3Way Networks announced plans to jointly market and collaborate on an all-IP solution including interoperability of Tatara's femtocell-focused fixed mobile convergence (FMC) application server and subscriber gateway with 3Way's femtocell. According to the two companies, "The key to mass-market adoption of the all-IP femtocell architecture is the interface between the femtocell and the core network."

This is where things start go get complicated because cellular manufacturer Nokia Siemens Networks has its own ideas of how functions should be divided between femtocell and core 3G network and how these should interoperate and has published these as an "open architecture". It announced recently that another leading femtocell player, RadioFrame Networks had agreed to ensure that its OmniRadio femtocell would conform to Nokia Siemens Networks' open architecture.

In short the femtocell ecosystem is still very much in a state of flux. Cisco has presently just dipped its toe in the water. When it decides to dive in it will make a big impact.