The Femtocell Conference

Avren, a boutique conference firm, hit a home run July 3-5 with the industry’s first femtocell event. Adding to the allure was the inaugural meeting of the new Femto Forum which resulted in a staggering 240 attendees all crammed into a hotel ball room at Heathrow to hear about femtocells.

I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts that we picked up from the event:

- The operators have consolidated around a 'RAN gateway' approach.

Early on there was talk of potentially using Iu-b or even SIP, but those have been largely dismissed by the operators. All major operators and vendors (NSN, Alcalu, Motorola, NEC, Ericsson) have proposed a RAN gateway (like a UNC) solution that provides an Iu connection to the mobile core.

This approach is low impact to the core and ensures full service transparency (all GSM/3G services are delivered over the femtocell), the same reasons why UMA defined a RAN gateway approach 2+ years ago. What's interesting is that rather than rallying around UMA, vendors are each defining their own proprietary approaches. Motorola and NEC are following the UMA path.

- Operators are *insisting* on an open interface

This makes sense. They want a robust, competitive market for femtocells, with many suppliers delivering products that meet a single, standardized interface. This achieves the economies of scale for femto manufacturers to drive costs down. Of course, UMA is already an open/published specification. NSN took the unusual step of stating they will publish their ‘vendor specific’ protocol for other femto vendors to build too. I’m sure the other vendors (ip.Access, Ericsson, Alcalu, NEC, Motorola, ...) can’t wait to build a femto that conforms to the Nokia/Siemens specification (or vice versa).

- The hype is high, but reality is starting to set in.

It was clear from the tone of the operators that femtocells are an exciting opportunity. But all realize there is a LOT of work to be done before the promise/hype meets up with the shelves of consumer electronics stores.

- A word on UMA

In all of this, UMA continues to be the only published, industry recognized standard for femtocell backhaul. The minor work to extend the current UMA specification to support Iu was kicked off in Oct 06 at the 3GPP.

Through its work with Dual-Mode Handsets, UMA already has the ability to integrate millions of devices into the mobile core, has the access control mechanisms to support consumer grade products, and a robust handover procedure. These capabilities are yet to be defined by the vendors scrambling to come up with their own RAN gateway protocols. UMA is the standardized RAN gateway approach.

Two other things UMA has going for it versus these ‘vendor specific’ approaches. One is that UMA supports dual-mode handset services as well as femtocells. While an operator may not be interested in a DMH service today, the future protection offered by a UMA infrastructure, with no price premium (UNCs are already deployed in volume around the world for DMH), is very compelling.

Second is that UMA supports 2G femtocells as well as 3G femtocells. If an operator is going to deploy a ‘combo’ AP, or is interested in 2G femtos, UMA is the only choice.

All in all, UMA is really proving why it is known as ‘GAN’, it is a generic access network technology, easily adaptable to new applications.

Mobile Roaming with UMA

With so many announcements at 3GSM, it’s hard to keep track of them all.

One little noticed announcement came from Boingo. The company launched a worldwide Wi-Fi service for mobile phones. For a flat rate of $7.95, subscribers can connect their Wi-Fi enabled handsets to any one of Boingo’s 35,000+ hotspots around the world.

Presumably this is targeted at people who carry the Linksys iPhone to provide Skype access at hotspots.

However, I think there’s another perspective here that is very interesting for mobile operators.

There is a lot of talk about international mobile roaming rates, and pressure abounds to lower the fees charged. UMA and Boingo can address this concern immediately.

First, some background. From a dual mode handset perspective, one challenge to using a mobile phone in hotspot-type Wi-Fi location is that most access points are designed for laptop users to log in, connect and pay for access. Yet mobile phones don’t have the capability to enter a credit card number or even render the landing page of the Wi-Fi network.

To overcome this problem, Boingo has developed an open-source version of their access manager. The Boingo client, running on a dual mode handset, can be configured to identify a foreign SSID, check if the AP is part of the Boingo network, then automatically supply the authentication credentials. Thus any of the 35k APs in the Boingo network can become a seamless extension of an operator’s Wi-Fi network.

For me, making a call with my US SIM when I was in Barcelona cost about $1/minute. With a UMA-enabled phone, technically I should be able to connect to any Wi-Fi AP and calls would be local and therefore billed at my normal per minute. But mobile operators like the roaming revenues, so most UMA service plans disable the use of Wi-Fi access outside the home country.

However, suppose my T-Mobile UMA service offered a special International package. So, for example, calls made from outside the US, over the Boingo hotspot network, are billed at a discount of $0.50/minute.

For the consumer, this is a 50% reduction in the cost, certainly enough to generate interest. For operators, that $0.50/minute is nearly all profit as the call connects over IP and the international operator’s GSM network is bypassed.

Seamless handover isn’t supported (the UNC isn’t connected to the local BSC), so there’s no problem with partial billing or handover billing.

It’s a win-win situation, operators continue to collect fat margins on international calls, and consumers actually get a cost savings on a per minute rate.

I think these guys at Boingo are on to something.

3GSM and Femtocells

Recovery from 3GSM is well underway, but as I reflect on it, a hot topic of the show was femtocells. Nearly every operator wanted to hear the femtocell story and how UMA is the technology for integrating hundreds of thousands of devices into the mobile core.

The “lack of handsets” is considered to be the biggest downside to dual mode handset service and seems to be driving everyone to femtocells. Even with announcements for new devices from Sagem, HP and BenQ, the market wanted to hear how femtocells will deliver fixed-mobile substitution.

From a UMA perspective, dual mode handsets or femtocells are fine. Both drive the investment in the mobile network equipment. And once installed, operators can leverage the UNC for either dual mode handset service and/or femtocells.

All in all, femtocells are a win-win for UMA technology.