Tradeshow Vibes

Tradeshow Vibes: December 17, 2007

Public Relations for the Telecommunications,

Wireless and Networking Industries

2nd International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells
Dallas , TX
Marriott Las Colinas
December 5-7

Exhibitors: 20
Attendees: 275
Media/Analyst: 12

The hype surrounding femtocells has reached a fever pitch, so it’s only fitting that events begin to heavily focus on the topic. Avren Events continued the momentum from its 1st International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells, which was held in July in London, to bring the follow-on event to Dallas.

Femtocells, which can be described as router-sized mobile home base stations, are being billed as the next big thing in fixed-mobile convergence, promising to solve the many shortcomings faced by existing WiFi/cellular FMC services. They should enable operators to offer consumers high-speed data, VoIP and conventional voice services in the home with reduced infrastructure costs and cheaper prices for the consumer. Major operators from around the world want to deploy femtocells globally from 2008. Early trials and consumer deployments are already underway in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Since the femtocell market is a nascent one, much of the focus of the show was on the idea that the market is becoming real. “Trials are picking up, and vendors are getting more guarded about their information,” said Peter Jarich, a principal analyst with Current Analysis. But there are still many unanswered questions around the technology, primarily around business models and how to integrate femtocells in the network. The conference touched heavily on those two topics.

The judge of whether a conference is worth attending usually has to do with how many service providers are involved. The 2nd International Conference on Home Access Points and Femtocells had no shortage of heavy hitters. AT&T, 02, Softbank, Sprint, Telefonica, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone occupied many of the speaking slots. And attendees reported that Softbank, AT&T and Vodafone revealed extensive plans about their femtocell implementations.

A large cross section of vendors attended, spoke and exhibited at the show. Larger names such as Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung were represented, as well as vendors such as PicoChip and NextPoint. The larger infrastructure providers sent their product executives to the show, while smaller vendors such as Airvana and NextPoint sent their higher-ups such as chief technology officers and vice presidents.

Attendees told us the event was most useful as a networking event given the fact that the femtocell industry is facing a plethora of standards, protocols and architectures that still need to be resolved. Most vendors simply aren’t ready to show off products yet, and attendees were most interested in learning from the sessions rather than perusing the small exhibit floor.

"The news is not like NXTCOMM or VON historically," said Akshay Sharma, research director with Gartner. “This is more of a networking forum with analysts and carrier executives and equipment vendor executives.”