Motorola begins 3G Femtocell trial in EMEA

BASINGSTOKE, UK : Motorola, Inc. has completed end-to-end testing of its 3G femtocell solution and has begun trialing its solution with a major European operator.

Joe Cozzolino, corporate vice president and general manager Motorola Home & Networks Mobility, EMEA, said, “Leveraging expertise from across the Motorola organization, we offer a fully integrated and tested end-to-end solution, based on open standard interfaces, which includes a range of femtocell customer premises equipment (CPE) and 3G devices, a core network concentrator, systems integration services and a CPE management solution – the Motorola Netopia Broadband Server (NBBS).”

Femtocells enable operators to provide higher-quality and higher-performance wireless voice and real-time data services to their customers inside their homes. In addition, they enable a significantly lower cost of delivery for wireless traffic, in comparison to the macrocell network.

For consumers, the benefits of femtocells include a seamless communication experience as they roam from inside to outside their homes, reduced “in-home” call charges, improved indoor coverage and consolidated billing, all from their existing 3G handsets.

“In Europe, 30 to 40 percent of the cellular traffic is generated from inside the home.  Femtocells provide a more efficient way for operators to manage traffic generated indoors, compared to the outdoor macrocells of the public cellular infrastructure,” commented Vincent Poulbere, principal analyst, Ovum. “In Western Europe, we forecast that 12 million femtocells will be deployed in 2010 rising to 17 million in 2011.”

Motorola is a member of the Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide. In addition, Motorola leverages its leadership in Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) deployments and experience in delivering convergence solutions to major operators worldwide.