UMA-based Femtos on Trial

One of the big news items of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) was femtocells. As reported here, there was a ‘femto frenzy’ building in the market. Then on Monday, two UMA-based femtocell trial announcements hit the wire.

The first was O2, announcing they are trialing a femtocell system from NEC. This was on the heels of NEC announcing their femtocell solution.

Second Telia announced plans for a femtocell trial to complement their Home Free dual-mode handset service. I recommend clicking through on the link, it’s an excellent way to work on your Swedish. Telia has been very aggressive in rolling out Home Free across Telia properties and has used a UMA-based solution from Motorola for some time.

I think UMA is starting to have an effect on the femtocell market. Clearly operators see the advantages (fastest time to market, fastest time to standards, robust, proven, investment protection for new FMC applications) and I’m certain there will be more UMA-based femtocell announcements to come.