Femtocell interop testing by March 2010

LONDON, UK: Come March next and the new multi-vendor UMTS femtocell equipment will go on inter-operability testing mode at the French location of Sophia Antipolis in a bid to validate the 3GPP femtocell standard.

The event is to involve interoperability tests between femtocell network gateways, security gateways, femtocell access points and chipsets from all the key vendors to verify the 3GPP's Iuh interface, the Femto Forum, an independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, said in a press release.

Release 8 Iuh interface standardization provides the interface between femtocell access points and femtocell network gateways in the core network. Equipment upgrades to meet this standard are expected to enter the market over the next six months.

However, it is not yet known as to which vendors will be participants in the testing event. The Plugfest, to be organized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), might look at covering the whole arena of the femtocell space and could include chip developers, system integrators, gateway and access point suppliers. It is a known fact that vendor interoperability is key to operator confidence with regard to mass deployments.

“Vendor interoperability is the key ingredient that will give operators the confidence to start mass deployments. Not only will this allow operators to start mixing and matching their technology providers as they do with mobile handsets today, it will also drive economies of scale to bring down the cost of the technology,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.

The release added that testing will cover IPsec/IKEv2 security protocols that allow femtocells to communicate over the Internet to system operators' core networks too.

The tests will also be aimed at ensuring that all the 20-plus femtocell access point models and over a dozen network gateways on the market work together.