T-Mobile Joins Ubiquisys and Huawei for Femtocell Testing

Wireless carrier T-Mobile, together with Ubiquisys Limited (“Ubiquisys”) and Huawei Technologies (“Huawei”), announced on Monday the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at femtocell Interoperability Testing (IOT) at T-Mobile’s labs. According to the telecom companies, the testing will be made during the following six months and will include Femtocells from both Ubiquisys and Huawei, while also involving the 3GPP’s new Iuh standardised open interface.

Femtocells from the two companies are to be connected to T-Mobile's core network via a Huawei Femto Gateway. T-Mobile, Ubiquisys and Huawei also announced that they planned on delivering a scalable, multi-vendor femtocell solution based on open standards. The three partners aim at opening a new road for carriers, so as to enable them select femtocells from various vendors, while knowing that they will be compatible one with another.

Klaus-Jurgen Krath of T-Mobile commented the following on the new announcement: “T-Mobile has a long track record of practical innovation in the mobile industry. We are active members of the Femto Forum and the standards bodies, we have completed comprehensive femtocell trials with Ubiquisys and Huawei, and we have made a strategic investment in Ubiquisys. These IOT-tests will demonstrate for the first time that femtocell interoperability is becoming a reality.”

According to Will Franks, CTO and founder, Ubiquisys, femtocells need to feature similar functionality as mobile phones do, namely they need to come with interchangeability with the networks they are connected to. “As a pioneer in this industry, we designed our Femtocell from day one to connect to multiple Femto Gateways, ready for the introduction of a 3GPP standardised interface. We are delighted to be working with T-Mobile and Huawei to demonstrate the huge potential of femtocell interoperability,” he added.

Wan Biao, president of Huawei Wireless Product Line, also iterated Huawei's commitment to the new IOT, stating that the entire femtocell ecosystem is expected to benefit from this partnership. “Since 2005 Huawei began the research on Femtocell and has become a leading E2E solution provider with deployments of Femtocell commercial and trial networks across the world. 2010 will see the transition for Femto to the mass market,” Wan Biao said, adding that Huawei is committed to the standardization and evolution of the industry.