Manufacturer of femtocell in the UK goes solo

The sale of femtocell products directly to the public is currently being planned by a UK-based manufacturer but in order to force network operators to work with each other it will need to drastically increase the number of customers it has.

Rather than attempting to sell directly to customers at the moment the femtocell manufacturer, Hay Systems Ltd (HSL) is attempting to make deals with the operators themselves. In order to get the operators to agree to integrate their back end systems and also provide the necessary spectrum the will need to get itself some registrations of interest.

Customers will be able to use their own broadband services as a backhaul service and can also get wireless broadband coverage of around 50 metres from their router using the femtocell, which is used as a little base station. The sale of the femtocell was meant to be sold through quad-play by network operators when the concept was originally developed as this would allow them to ensure better quality of service by prioritising voice traffic on their networks.

The ability to run over any kind of network connection and still maintain a best-effort quality means that the first femtocell deployment by Vodafone, which was the first in the UK, was purely parasitic in nature.

The sale of femtocells directly to the consumer at a price of around £160, which is similar to those sold by Vodafone, is the next step that HSL are currently trying to take. By using a standard broadband connection users will be able to use their femtocell to access any mobile network provider or can even use it for multiple operators.

Integration into network operators’ backhaul system and the necessary spectrum with which to run the service will, however, be required before HSL can do any of this.

A website has been set up by HSL for customer to register an interest in order to achieve these goals.

Source – The Register