2011 Post Event Round Up

The Femtocell industry came together for the Femtocells World Summit 2011 in the prestigious Sheraton Park Lane Hotel, in Central London this June, in what proved to be a tremendous success, and an event filled with exciting announcements and news.

Organised in exclusive partnership with the Femto Forum, this 4th edition of FWS brought together over 45 speakers and 360 delegates from around the globe. In a busy, networking oriented environment, the entire eco-system discussed the progress thus far made, and the future of femtocell technology.

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Day 1 kicked off with Femto Forum’s Simon Saunders announcing that this last quarter had been the best since the start of femtocell deployments, having seen a growth of nearly 60% in deployments, and noted that today, nearly 1/3 of all deployments include enterprise and public offerings. He also predicted that there would be over 48 million FAPs in use worldwide by 2014. He ended by noting that today, femtocells outnumber conventional 3G base stations.

Thilo Kirchinger, of Vodafone Group Marketing, gave a compelling presentation about Vodafone’s global femtocell strategy, and their vision and requirements to continue to expand on this technology. Vodafone’s international deployment strategy has led them to deploy in 9 of their networks, with plenty more to come in the next few months, however, they are still looking for more uptake from operators, a clear set of standards and lower CPE costs from vendors.

Ferruccio Antonelli, Telecom Italia’s Home Network & Handset Engineering Director, announced their imminent femtocell launch in the next few months, and described the challenges in location authentication for FAPs.

SK Telecom’s Tae-Yong Kim started his presentation by explaining the problem with data traffic increase due to the explosion of smart phone penetration in their network, a view that was also shared by Juniper Research’s Nitin Bhas in his presentation. To overcome this issue, SK Telecom have deployed an innovative data-only femtocell to offload traffic from their network and expand their service.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Steve Kemp walked on stage with their new Light Radio small cell concept, and presented small cells, and femtocells in particular, as the answer to the theoretical capacity limit, Shannon’s law, which limits spectral efficiency to 3.5mbps per hertz.

Nigel Toon, CEO of PicoChip, reminded the audience of the tremendously high CAPEX and OPEX costs that the industry faces, and gave some interesting solutions using femtocells and small cells as the answer to decrease expenditure, increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

Bill Chang, strategy and operating officer for Malaysia’s latest mobile entrant, U Mobile, presented their position in the market as the 4th operator in Malaysia, a highly dense market with mobile penetration of over 120%. From their point of view, the key ARPU is in data and they are looking to differentiate themselves through the use of femtocells.

Qualcomm and CCPU presented femtocells as not only a solution for the home, but as a new revenue stream opportunity for operators. On that note, NEC’s Baldev Gill challenged the industry to increase femtocell volume and described the easy steps that need to be taken to monetise this technology and make in an attractive offering to the customer. Finally, NTT DoCoMo explained the role of femtocells in disaster relief during the March Tsunami, and explored their future plans for femtocells.

The session ended with Simon Saunders moderating a panel with ETSI, 3GPP and GPP2 discussing the latest advances and developments in standards.

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Day 2 opened with Dr. Alan Law, New Technologies Manager for Vodafone Group. Although femtocells are already quite widespread in their network, they are now looking for new applications for this technology. Enterprise offerings, as well as rural and outdoor femtocells are well into the trialling stages and, given the positive results, should be rolled out in the near future.

Next up was Rick Vergin, CEO of Mosaic Telecom, a small fixed and mobile operator serving the western portion of the US state of Wisconsin. Mr. Vergin explained that, being a rural operator, they struggle with coverage in sparsely populated areas, and see femtocells as a logical answer to this dilemma. Although they have struggled to find a vendor, it looks like now femtocell deployment is in the road map.

Huawei’s Pablo Brito gave an uplifting presentation outlining the positive features of femtocells, and highlighting the great opportunities for femtocells in future heterogeneous networks. Speaking specifically about case studies such as Optimus, Orange Romania and China Unicom, Pablo concluded that the future for femtocells is promising.

Peter Agnew of Colt Telecom presented on the role of a fixed line operator in femtocell deployment and services, and explained what they can offer to the operators to create a wider small cell network and offer femtocells as a value added service.

Ip Access then presented about the importance of giving the end user a valuable service with small cells, and pointed out that for most customers, they value call service and drop calls as key performance indicators for their operators. On that note, they mentioned SMEs as a promising market for femtocells, especially with higher value customers.

Polychronis Tzerefos of Vodafone Greece explained their deployment strategy, and gave a few interesting statistics. They’ve noticed that, following their deployment, customers thinking about churning has reduced from 65% to 8%, and their financial objectives for the next five years have been met in under 11 months.

Cisco ended the morning session highlighting the need for converged products, joining WiFi offerings with femtocell in one single gateway, and providing a sustainable option for data offload.

Following the networking lunch, Geir Ove Jenssen, Femtocell Project Manager for Network Norway, ran through the enterprise deployment in their network, and highlighted some applications such as knowing when your colleagues are in the office and available to chat. In a market where Network Norway is the third largest operators, they see femtocells as a key differentiator with their competition, and have put a lot of effort and resources in its product development.

Ubiquisys’ CTO, Will Franks, explained the challenges in successful metrocell deployment, and gave the example of a train station, where femtocells could gradually be introduced in coffee shops and other such establishments as hot spots, followed by wider reaching cells around the station, and eventually, outdoors. Will also described their new partnership with Texas Instruments to develop a new generation of small cells capable of handling data traffic more efficiently, a theme that was also picked up on during TI’s presentation later that afternoon.

Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Research led a panel on the role of small cells in the general network architecture, building on themes such as LTE deployments, public access networks and heterogeneous networks. Speakers from NEC, CCPU and PicoChip all agreed that, while small cells will play an increasingly important role in future networks, it doesn’t look like they will substitute conventional macro sites.

Following the panel, Steve Price, General Manager of Communications and Infrastructure Division for Intel highlighted the tremendous need for data traffic infrastructure given the demand for mobile videos and internet surfing from customers. As such, Steve pointed out that heterogeneous networks will be key to handle capacity and ameliorate connectivity for the end user.

Telecom Italia’s Camillo Carlini gave a comprehensive presentation on the importance of the recently announced industry APIs for femtocells, and noted that they see femtocell applications as a unique opportunity to monetise femtocells. They would like to offer location based services that can offer you real time nearby special offers on products you are interested in, or even tourist information for the surrounding areas.

Pavel Skorodumov of MegaFon presented the deployment scenario in Russia, where they have been working with several vendors to cover the entire territory. They have run a series of very positive femtocell trials, and plan to deploy in 2012.

The day was brought to a close by the Enterprise Panel, moderated by Aditya Kaul of ABI Research. Panellists from Telecom Italia, Vodafone Greece, Network Norway, Qualcomm and Alcatel-Lucent agreed on the great opportunity in the enterprise market, and discussed the fact that open mode femtocells will be key to expand on this idea, especially in larger areas such as stadia or shopping malls.

Following the session, the Gala Dinner was held, during which the Femto Forum presented the prestigious Annual Femto Forum Femtocell Industry Awards.   

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Tata Elxsi opened the conference on day 3, presenting several deployment scenarios that maximise the effectiveness of a femtocell and guarantee successful handover between small cells and the macro network.

Tata was followed on stage by Dave Williams, Senior VP of Wireless, Comcast. Traditionally a fixed cable operator, Dave explained Comcast’s strategy to use their existing fixed backhaul to deploy femtocells, and the necessity of creating a complementary product with WiFi, especially given WiFi’s prominence, and femtocells’ undeniable ease of use.

Jorge Alvarez, Network Strategy Manager for Telefónica O2 took the stage next to discuss O2’s challenge in monetising femtocells. Jorge explained that although Telefonica believe in the benefits of small cells, they will focus mostly on offload, rather than coverage solutions. For this reason, they are focusing their efforts on developing a small cell layer for their 4G deployments, especially in rural areas.

Sanjiv Kapur, Aricent’s Director of Product Management ran through the main drivers behind femtocell innovation such as demand for mobile bandwidth, the need for offload solutions, new standard evolutions and localized services, before moving on to what the future looks like for femtocells, beyond residential solutions.

Following the coffee break, Reneta Haynes of Verizon Wireless presented their femtocell deployment strategy. Of particular interest, was Verizon’s trial in Chicago, where a series of high value customers were given femtocells, where satisfaction levels rose above 70%. Haynes also commented on the need of placing femtocells in the market not as a solution for bad coverage, but rather as a value added service to their customer.

Niloufar Tayebi, Product Manager for Genband presented innovative traffic and policy management solutions and gave several key points to optimise a network and, perhaps most importantly, develop new tools to generate new revenue streams.

NSN was next on the stage, and Timo Hyppola gave an interesting presentation about the importance of standards and APIs for the development and evangelisation of femtocells. With standards, LTE femto gateways will be developed uniformly and will ensure interoperability.

After the last networking lunch break of the conference, Andy Germano, vice-chairman of the Femto Forum, gave an overview of what the consumer demands from their network operator, and how femtocells can help to bring value added services to these customers. Femtocells, he said, have the capability of not only guaranteeing 5 bar indoor service, but provide low cost and high speed service and provide smart services for the user. Andy also highlighted the need for interoperator femtocells and increased public awareness of the technology.

Following on SK Telecom’s presentation on day 1, Contela’s CMO Jang-Ahn Kwon presented their innovative data-only femtocell. Mr. Kwon pointed out that in recent times data traffic in South Korea has exploded nearly 20 fold, and their deployment with SK Telecom has been an effective solution to deal with this sudden increase in traffic.

Jesada Sivaraks, of Thailand’s TOT, gave a very interesting presentation about femtocell deployment with broadband and satellite backhaul. Phone booths in Bangkok and other urban centers, have lost their use due to mobile penetration, so TOT has recycled them to hold small femtocells, thus providing immediate service. As a new operator in Thailand, they see femtocells as a perfect solution to build a network without having to spend time acquiring land and licenses to build macro sites. Finally, Jesada went through a case study where TOT deployed femtocells in a flood stricken area, immediately restoring mobile coverage for the local residents.

Stuart Carlaw of ABI Research presented the audience with a run through the opportunities for enterprise femtocells drawing on customer surveys that highlighted the way people use their mobile phones for personal and business related calls and e-mail.

Phelim May, Femto Product Manager for Vodafone Ireland then took the stage to present the case study for Sure Signal deployment in Ireland. Phelim gave solid examples of video and radio ads that were broadcast in Ireland to present the product. Phelim made the point that the ads didn’t focus on the negative aspect of the lack of indoor coverage, but rather on the positive results of a femtocell in the home. Much like other operators during the three days of the conference, Phelim reported extremely positive customer satisfaction results, with a dramatic decrease in dissatisfied users.

The conference was brought to an end with a forward looking panel moderated by Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum. The panel focussed on where femtocells will be in 5 years, and where the opportunities lie for operators. Panellists from Colt Telecom, Vodafone Ireland and Telefonica O2 discussed heterogeneous networks, the role of femtocells in providing service in LTE and even in an LTE Advanced scenario, and the important role that applications will play in monetising femtocells.

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In all, Femtocells World Summit 2011 was a fantastic success, and another sign that the femtocell industry has grown up. The increased number of deployments at a global scale, as well as the overwhelmingly positive outlook on femtocells was testament to the promising opportunities that femtocell technology offers for operators and vendors alike.

We hope to see you next year, at Small Cells World Summit 2012!

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