Nokia Siemens Networks has partnered with Airvana in order to provide an end-to-end femto cell solution for mobile operators around the world. The two companies have both a long time experience in developing solutions for mobile broadband services.

The Femto technology uses a broadband Internet connection to bring consumers better mobile voice, video and data services, especially at home. In order to do this, they use the existing connectivity and an off-the-shelf silicon to accelerate feature development and reduce product cost.

The two companies have managed to make end-to-end calls using Airvana's femto cell and Nokia Siemens Networks' Femto Gateway to connect to a 3GPP core network. The two companies will cooperate in the marketing and sales of the joint solution to mobile operators at a global scale. Nokia Siemens has the strategy needed to make this possible, while Airvana is capable of fitting it in the right environment.

The new solutions are supposed to make it easier to bring new services to customers. "Nokia Siemens Networks is a strong proponent of employing open interfaces, a philosophy shared by Airvana. Operators now have greater flexibility and choice thanks to the compatibility of Femto customer premises equipment with our open architecture. This approach provides us the flexibility we need to best meet the demands of the market", considers Timo Hyppola, Indoor Radio Solutions Product Line, Nokia Siemens Networks.

ABI Research sees great potential in the Femoto technology. The company sees a great chance for this type of services to grow almost by 100 percent every year, which means that it will be worth more than USD 4 billion, by 2012. Both Nokia Siemens Networks and Airvana will bring independently this type of products to the operator. Initial trials of the joint solution will start by the end of 2007, while deployments will begin only in 2008.