NEC announced today that MegaFon, a leading Russian mobile operator, has selected NEC’s femtocell solution to enhance the indoor mobile experience of its residential and enterprise customers. MegaFon plans to launch the high-speed, high-quality indoor mobile service to its residential and enterprise customers later this year.
The NEC femtocell solution was successfully tested and trialled with MegaFon subscribers at the North-West branch of MegaFon in Saint-Petersburg in 2010.
The majority of mobile traffic is generated indoors; however there is an inherent 3G mobile challenge of unreliable indoor coverage. Femtocells extend indoor mobile coverage and boost capacity ensuring high speeds and reliability.
“NEC’s femtocell solution will allow MegaFon to differentiate by providing their customers with premium mobile services,” said Vladimir Lobanov Head of Project Management Division of CJSC NEC Neva Communications Systems. “Our femtocell solution will ensure that their customers always have the five-bar coverage indoors that they expect and dedicated capacity to run data-intensive applications on their smartphones and tablets.”
An NEC Femtocell is a small wireless cellular base station similar in size and appearance to a broadband router that connects over broadband to a mobile operator’s core network. It provides dedicated mobile coverage and capacity for full personal use delivering excellent experience and increased customer loyalty.
NEC is providing MegaFon an end-to-end femtocell solution that includes NEC Femtocells, and femtocell gateway systems that connect to MegaFon’s existing core systems. MegaFon customers can install the NEC Femtocell with no intervention from MegaFon due to its “plug and play” capability.
NEC has 11 contracts worldwide with mobile operators for femtocell system deployments which make up nearly half a million femtocell devices. In addition, NEC has 24 femtocell system trials in progress or that have been completed with mobile operators around the world.
Furthermore, NEC’s commercial accomplishments in the femtocell field include provision of the world’s first femtocell IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for Softbank Mobile Corp. in Japan, the deployment of France’s first commercial femtocell services through SFR and in Norway through Network Norway. NEC is on target to deploy its first 100,000 Femtocell Access Point (FAP) network.