Femtocell Trade Group Agrees on Single Interoperability Standards

The Femto Forum, the industry association that supports femtocell deployment, has made important progress towards harmonising the integration of femtocells into mobile networks. Although this wonÃ't affect the numerous deployments planned in the short term, operators and vendors have agreed that a united approach in the longer term is essential.

At its plenary meeting in March, operator members agreed the following principles for interoperability on the so-called Fa interface between Femtocell Access Points and Femto Gateways:

• There shall be a single definition of the Fa interface with specific modules defined for each radio technology to comply with existing standards.
• A "collapsed" architecture will be adopted where the NodeB/BTS and RNC/BSC functionality will be placed in the Femto Access Point (FAP) to optimize signaling and performance over the broadband connection.
• Interfaces from the Gateway to the core network shall use existing standards.

To aid this drive towards common practices, the forum has been accepted as a Market Representation Partner (MRP) with key industry standards bodies, 3GPP, 3GPP2 and established cooperation agreements with the DSL Forum and the GSMA, in order to ensure that femtocells develop in a way that meets the needs of both mobile and fixed operators, while advising on how existing standards are affected and should evolve.

"The last 3 months have seen a dramatic change in the femtocell market - it has gone from being a vendor led initiative to being an operator driven reality. With a number of major operators around the world announcing plans to deploy femtocells in the next 12 months it is now very clear that they are in the driving seat," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. "Our operator members have aligned their requirements for integrating femtocells into networks in the longer term, and the result is that the vendors and operators are now working together to establish best practice for interoperable protocols that will be used for the different types of mobile networks."

Posted to the site on 21st May 2008