Team to Develop 3G Femtocell Home Gateway

This gateway device will offer mobile operators worldwide a single-box, converged solution at a competitive price. It is anticipated that the NETGEAR gateway integrating Ubiquisys' femtocell technology will be available for operator testing by Q4 2007, with commercial availability slated for early 2008.

WiMax/Broadband Wireless - Vodafone's WiMax Creep - Wireless News Analysis

While Vodafone's small-scale Maltese deployment is unlikely to cause meltdown in the mobile network infrastructure community, it could be seen as a shot across the bows of vendors perceived to be dragging their heels over the development of long-term evolution (LTE), or 4G, products -- especially as Vodafone is now involved in WiMax activities in Bahrain, France, Greece, New Zealand, and South Africa, too, either directly or through affiliates.

Nortel WiMAX Ecosystem Promotes Global WiMAX Growth

Among others, Nortel will work with ZyXEL, Runcom (News - Alert), and Sequans to offer service providers a variety of end-to-end WiMAX solutions. Through its collaboration with ZyXEL, these solution offerings will include ZyXEL PCMCIA cards and customer premises equipment (CPE), such as indoor and outdoor residential gateways, which will be bundled for sale with Nortel’s WiMAX infrastructure technology.

Femto With WiMax

Silicon could be key in enabling a multi-radio mini-base station. Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM - message board) has already started to express an interest in developing chips for this type of application. Major players such as Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN - message board), as well as smaller companies like PicoChip Designs Ltd. , are already working on dedicated femtocell chipsets. Meanwhile, RadioFrame is extending its own OmniFrame silicon to support WiMax. (See Qualcomm's Home Invasion.)

WiMAX in Europe Facing a Brighter Future Where Technology-Neutral Spectrum Is Available

The European Commission and several national regulators, including Norway, Sweden, and the UK, want the situation to change, as does the WiMAX Forum. The ITU has now also agreed that OFDM-based technologies should be included in the IMT2000 standard. This will place mobile WiMAX on the same footing as 3G mobile when it comes to using the 3G extension bands and, potentially, existing 3G bands.

"This is a good sign for technology neutrality becoming the accepted approach for spectrum auctions in the future," says ABI Research analyst Ian Cox. "Mobile WiMAX products will start to appear in 2007 and can be used in unpaired spectrum, giving them an opportunity not available to UMTS."

Tatara Systems raises $8m

Tatara Systems, a worldwide leader in mobile services convergence, today announced that it has secured $8 million in additional funding to fuel the company’s growth in the rapidly emerging femtocell market. This investment was led by Highland Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, two leading firms with extensive experience investing in communications equipment, network infrastructure, and software.

Kineto Wireless and NEC Femtocell Collaboration

NEC will integrate Kineto’s UMA Network Controller (UNC) into NEC’s Home Gateway
Solution.