Femtocells get a big boost from Qualcomm

I know you’ll be asking first: “What’s in the world Femtocells?” So I’m going to explain it first, Femtocells are small base stations for wireless home broadband; they can improve indoor coverage and increase capacity. When a user is making calls and surfing the Web with a phone or laptop equipped with wireless broadband signals are sent via the femto cell and a fixed broadband connection.

Qualcomm has joined in with other investors such as Cisco, Intel, ADC, Motorola, etc. to fund ip.access; the maker of Femtocells and picocell. CEO of ip.access Stephen Mallinson said “It was embryonic a year ago, but now it has turned into a real concept, and real products are emerging. The funding deal with Qualcomm will help ip.access roll out products."

According to Mikael Ricknas (PCW Business Center), Interoperability is key for femto cells to become successful in the mass market and the Femto Forum-related announcements are aimed at that goal. "Interoperability is our bread and butter, ensuring a full range of services at home. You don't want an error message when you swap to your femto cell ," said David Pringle, spokesman at GSM Association.

But how will Femtocells fight with the rising star WiMAX? Qualcomm chief operating officer and president of the QCT (Qualcomm CDMA Technologies) division Sanjay Jha gives WiMAX a pretty short shift: "WiMAX has no handoff and no latency control. It's based on a cable standard [DOCSIS] and was never designed for wireless".

A good insights were spotted by Bill Ray (The Register): Femtocells are what's needed to allow W-CDMA to take on UWB, Wi-Fi and any other radio technology, and they're coming. Qualcomm can demonstrate a domestic femtocell taking a high-definition video stream from a phone handset to a TV, while simultaneously handling a VoIP call for good measure. When a mobile phone can stream HD TV, and play 3D games, Qualcomm can't see why you'd want any other electronics in your house.

Sure those big boys at those big companies love to talk big, but I’m afraid we’ll not be seeing both Femtocells and WiMAX soon enough into our hands. There are lots of things to fix & test first on such new technologies, and you know how strict those officers at FCC.

[blogged with my Treo 750v]