The Femto Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today announced it has completed the world's first femtocell plugfest. The plugfest process, which extended over many months and culminated in the test event itself, was organized in cooperation with ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and had widespread vendor support with over twenty companies participating, including vendors of network equipment and femtocells as well as software and hardware components.        

The companies involved were Ablaze Wireless, Acme Packet, Airvana, Alcatel-Lucent Telecom, Alpha Networks, Askey Computer Corporation, C&S Microwave, Cisco Systems Inc, Contela, Continuous Computing, Genband, Huawei, IntelliNet Technologies, ip.access, Kineto Wireless, NEC, Node-H, Nokia Siemens Networks, picoChip, Technicolor, TRaC Global and Ubiquisys.  

The primary objective of the plugfest, organized as an ETSI Plugtests interoperability testing event, was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the 3GPP femtocell standards in supporting interoperability between femtocell access points and network equipment from different vendors.  This helps ensure that there is consistent interpretation of the standard.   

Standardized femtocells provide operators and consumers with a richer ecosystem of femtocell products, as well as facilitating economies of scale.  

"The history of cellular is littered with companies that had extremely promising proprietary technologies but failed to achieve widespread adoption.  Put simply, the mobile operator community does not embrace non-standardized technologies.  The development of the 3GPP femtocell standard was momentous, but verification of the standard is required to enable mass market deployment.  Through the plugfest we are now a vital step closer to that target," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.  

"The fact that the plugfest was carried out so quickly after the completion of the 3GPP standard is testament to the industry's support for standardized femtocell access points and network equipment.  This process will ultimately allow operators to multisource the technology as they do with mobile handsets today," said Natasha Tamaskar, Chair of the Femto Forum's IOT Initiative. "This plugfest represents a crucial step towards the Femto Forum's vision of a fully open interoperable femtocell ecosystem."  

Adrian Scrase, Head of ETSI's Mobile Competence Centre, remarked, "I'm delighted that the Femto Forum partnered with ETSI for this significant event. The availability of the 3GPP Home NodeB (femtocell) specifications has encouraged the development of products that this interoperability event has been able to test. The results will not only provide confidence to the participating companies, they bring vital feedback to the standardization process. The event is therefore a critical part of the route to mass-market success for standardized femtocell solutions for 3GPP-based mobile networks."  

Interoperability tests were conducted between femtocell network gateways, security gateways, femtocell access points and chipsets to verify 3GPP's Iuh interface as defined in the Release 8 series of specifications.  The plugfest also tested the IPsec/IKEv2 security protocols which allow femtocells to communicate over the public Internet to operators' core networks in a highly secure manner. 3GPP's Release 8 femtocell standard was published in April 2009, and defines the secure interface between femtocell access points and femtocell gateways in the core network.  

TRaC Global, which specializes in testing, regulatory and compliance services, coordinated the plugfest for the Femto Forum.

According to Telefónica Spain, subscribers will soon enjoy a six-fold jump in its current mobile broadband speeds. The country's largest service provider has selected Nokia Siemens Networks to upgrade its 3G radio network to HSPA+, in preparation for the next generation of mobile communications. The three-year project will enable Telefónica Spain to increase data download speeds from 7.2 Mbps to 42 Mbps, the maximum possible in the current generation of 3G networks. 
 
"As subscriber demand grows, delivering a world-class mobile broadband experience requires a strong technology foundation," says Carlos Calvo, head of Technology, Operations & Systems at Telefónica Spain. "Through this project we will significantly improve our overall network performance allowing us to continue offering the best available mobile broadband services to our customers. Moreover, as Nokia Siemens Networks solution is highly energy-efficient, this will support our commitment to environmental sustainability and lower our operational costs." 
 
Nokia Siemens Networks will deploy new functionalities in response to Telefónica customers' demands for more speed, bandwidth and new services. Telefónica's network will be outfitted with evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) to boost the bandwidth used for data connections. The modernization project also foresees the possibility of providing 3G and GSM access simultaneously using the same 900 MHz band of radio spectrum, once the regulatory authorities allow it. 
 
"Telefónica is committed to continuous innovation, as well as improving the quality and breadth of its service offerings as a key factor to maintain its leadership," says Pentti Tolonen, head of Telefónica Spain customer team at Nokia Siemens Networks. "With our expertise and technology, Telefónica will improve network capacity, smart device signalling capability and ensure high quality advanced wireless services both today and in the future." 
 
The project will use Nokia Siemens Networks' LTE-ready Flexi Base Stations, a flexible and modular platform that brings significant energy efficiency and reduces the environmental impact of the network. The calculated yearly decrease in energy consumption, as a consequence of the network modernization, equals to 27.000 MWh, equivalent to the energy consumption of 6.750 Spanish homes*. In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks will provide its NetAct network management system to efficiently monitor, manage and optimize Telefónica's network. 

TDC and Vodafone today announced that they have extended their strategic Nordic Partnership to include Sweden and Norway, in addition to an existing agreement covering Denmark.

Effective from April 1st 2010, it's said the non-equity Partner Market agreement will allow both companies to better serve their respective customers within the Nordic region as well as internationally.

Vodafone and TDC have had an agreement addressing the Danish market since 2001. Under the broader Partner Market agreement, TDC has exclusive access to a range of products, services and devices from Vodafone, promoted under a co-branding model, in three Nordic countries, as well as the acquisition of enterprise customers and improved network inter-working.

"Our partnership with Vodafone will make life easier for our global oriented customers based in the Nordic region. The TDC/Vodafone product portfolio will now be available to all customers in Denmark, Norway and Sweden," said TDC Nordic Director Jens Munch-Hansen, who expects good results from a closer collaboration on product development between TDC and Vodafone.

He continued: "Vodafone is the world's leading international mobile communications group and therefore I am pleased they have chosen TDC as a key partner in three Nordic countries. It underlines the strength of TDC and the high quality of our products and service in the Nordic business market."

Richard Daly, CEO Partner Markets, Vodafone Group Plc, commented: "I am delighted that we have been able to extend our longstanding partnership with TDC in Denmark to cover both Sweden and Norway. We are well aware of the qualities of TDC across the region where they have an excellent network, high quality services and world class customer care. Vodafone's partnerships across the world are designed to give our travelling customers and business partners an assurance of quality, consistency and value for money. We can now leverage TDC's in-depth understanding of the Nordic market to further extend our international reach and to meet our customers' increasingly global expectations."

The R&S SMU200A high-end vector signal generator from Rohde & Schwarz is now available with an option that supports realtime processing of feedback information in LTE base station receiver tests.

Equipped with the R&S SMU-K69 option, the signal generator processes HARQ feedback as well as uplink timing adjustment commands from the base station, and then adapts the LTE signal dynamically in line with the 3GPP TS 36.141 test specification. These tests previously required special test user equipment (UE) and fading simulators, but Rohde & Schwarz now offers a one-box solution to replace complex test setups – the R&S SMU200A combines RF signal generation and fading simulation with realtime feedback processing capability all in a single instrument.

The 3GPP TS 36.141 conformance test specification defines a range of demanding closed-loop performance tests to characterize the performance of LTE base station receivers. A base station must be able to dynamically check the transmission of channel-coded data packets. This means that during testing, a signal generator not only needs to send RF signals with the correct channel coding in compliance with the LTE standard, but must also be able to respond to the feedback information from the base station. With the new R&S SMU K69 option (closed-loop BS test), the R&S SMU200A high-end signal generator now supports realtime processing of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback information and uplink timing adjustment commands.

Using the HARQ function, a base station signals to a mobile phone whether it received a data packet correctly or incorrectly. If transmission was impaired, for example by fading, the base station requests retransmission of the packet with modified channel coding. The R&S SMU200A behaves in a way that is analogous to the HARQ processes of real user equipment. The signal generator can also be installed with options that introduce fading and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) to simulate transmission conditions as stipulated by the test specification. This makes it possible to verify the base station's response to the received data packets with respect to the standard, using a single instrument.

A base station uses uplink timing adjustment to adapt the timing of all transmitting mobile phones in order to prevent overlapping transmissions. Due to the R&S SMU200A's dual-path architecture, even the demanding uplink timing adjustment test can be performed with a single unit: The signal generator simulates a stationary UE on one path and a moving UE on the other. The moving UE can transmit with or without a time offset relative to the stationary UE.

The R&S SMU200A features RF performance that in many cases surpasses that of test UE. This provides base station developers with more accurate and reliable results. The signal generator can also be used for many other base station LTE receiver tests specified by the standard, and therefore minimizes test setup complexity.

The R&S SMU-K69 LTE closed-loop BS test option for the R&S SMU200A high-end vector signal generator is now available from Rohde & Schwarz. An LTE closed loop BS test option (R&S AMU-K69) is also available for the R&S AMU200A baseband signal generator and fading simulator.

Openwave Systems, a global software specialist in mediation and messaging solutions, today announced the launch of its Openwave Smart User Repository for operators, a user data storage solution. 

Smart User Repository is said to offer high speed, low latency user profile and policy access that is specifically designed to assist operators in managing their increasing data traffic.  Because of its highly scalable and reliable architecture, Openwave says its Smart User Repository is an excellent candidate for operators' 3GPP  user profile repository (UPR) and user data repository (UDR) requirements, particularly as operators move quickly to deploy policy infrastructure addressing ever increasing traffic loads.

"As operators continue to witness unprecedented data traffic volumes, it is incumbent upon them to consider integrated policy management tools that will help them rapidly access user profile and policy  information as is common in the web world," said John Giere, senior vice president of products and marketing at Openwave. "One of our longstanding tier-one North American operators has already deployed our repository and is currently processing in excess of 2.5 billion queries a day."

According to Openwave, Smart User Repository's intelligent and flexible architecture allows for configurable deployments based on the respective operator's environment and traffic profile. Openwave's previous version of the offering, Openwave Directory, provides an easy transition for operators evaluating a replacement path for systems that are not scalable. Openwave say the key benefits of Smart User Repository include:

  a.. Intelligent Architecture – The decoupling of read and write operations can provide a lightweight Master/Replica architecture which allows for separate scaling of these characteristics as needs arise. Replicas can be diskless for better performance and lower cost.
  b.. Scalability – Scalability based on the loose coupling between the Master(s) and Replica(s). The lightweight replication mechanism can ensure low replication load on the Master(s) to maintain a linear cost of growing the system.
  c.. Availability/Reliability – Smart User Repository's architecture allows the operator to define different levels of spare capacity depending on the criticality of the application. The repository's predecessor, Openwave Directory, has demonstrated greater than 99.999% availability over the last five years at our largest deployment.
  d.. Low Latency – The lightweight replication mechanism of the Smart User Repository enables implementation of geo-distribution working to ensure low latency across wide areas. Replicas can serve single entry requests in less than three milliseconds depending on the hardware platform.
  e.. Continuous Service Operation During Upgrades – The loosely coupled architecture of the Smart User Repository is expected to provide the resilience and flexibility needed to manage the system on a day-to-day basis. Automatic distribution of schema updates can also facilitate daily management of the data model, even for widely distributed systems.

Huawei has announced that it has achieved the world's fastest LTE-advanced downlink speeds of up to 1.2 Gb/s at CTIA Wireless 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Huawei's LTE-advanced technology enables future development of LTE for operators and provides unparalleled mobile broadband experiences for consumers. The record speeds, which are more than 40 times faster than existing commercial 3G networks, are expected to revolutionize user experience by meeting bandwidth requirements of data-heavy applications," said Karen Yu, President of Huawei USA. "Huawei will continue to invest heavily in LTE and is committed to promoting industry developments and maturity."

The demonstration utilized Huawei's SingleRAN prototype LTE-advanced solution with 80 MHz multi-carrier wideband radio and included following features: carrier aggregation (CA), 4×4 multi-input multi-output (MIMO), coordinated multipoint transmission (CoMP) and relay. Huawei's SingleRAN solution is said to support network multi-mode convergence and evolution while reducing total cost of ownership for operators.