 The first home cellsites for standard mobile phones
The concept of a compact self-optimising home cellsite has been documented since 1999. Alcatel announced in March 1999 that they would bring to market a GSM home basestation which would be compatible with existing standard GSM phones. They planned to launch the product in 2000 and forecast capturing 50% of the market of 120 million units the following year.
The system design re-used and modified the Cordless Telephony Standard
(as used by digital DECT cordless phones), which was a forerunner of
the UMA standard used in dual-mode WiFi/Cellular solutions today. At
that time, dual mode DECT/GSM (rather than GSM/WiFi) was the mainstream approach to solving the problem.
Although the demonstration units were built and proven to work through
a standard POTS phone line, the high cost of the equipment (especially
the crystal required to keep long term frequency accurate to 50 parts
per billion) proved far too high to make it commercially viable.
Using WiFi instead
The focus then shifted to the UMA standard, which operators such as
France Telecom/Orange and T-Mobile US launched in several countries
with mixed results. The growing range of UMA capable handsets expanded
to include 3G phones in September 2008. Rather than requiring any
special basestation, the UMA system uses standard WiFi access points
with a UMA capable handset and a UNC to connect into the mobile
operator's core network.
During this period, "over-the-top" virtual network operators such as
Truphone and Fring, used the built-in WiFi capabilities in a growing
range of handsets to offer low cost calls over WiFi and or VoIP. These
schemes were more targetted at saving call charges, especially when
roaming abroad, than addressing coverage or capacity issues.
Mobile Technology miniaturised
Various research projects continued to work on femtocell concept
products, with Motorola engineers in Swindon claiming to have built the
first complete 3G home base station in 2002.
Several companies were also driving the cost and size down of existing
2G equipment. These were termed picocells (because they were installed
and maintained by operators, and were aimed at large business
customers) and were simply smaller and lower cost versions of larger
equipment. Vendors such as ip.access and Radioframe developed products in this space.
Research into lower cost chipsets to solve the problem of costs continued, and a new chipset design company - picoChip - was demonstrating 3G chipsets in 2003.
By mid-2004, two UK based startup companies were using these chipsets to develop their own 3G cellular home basestations - Ubiquisys and 3Way networks (now part of Airvana) .
Femtocell becomes a recognised term
Around 2005, the term femtocell was adopted for a standalone,
self-configuring home basestation. Rupert Baines, VP marketing of
picoChip and Will Franks, CTO of Ubiquisys are both said to have coined
the term during this period, although picoChip registered the website
URL www.femtocell.com first (in April 2006).
Used of the term femtocell is first documented by analyst Dean Bubley , having heard the term at a wireless VoIP conference in November 2005.
Products were demonstrated by several vendors at the 3GSM conference
in February 2007, and they were one of the main topics at the 2008
conference.
The femto forum was formed in 2007 and grew to represent industry players and advocate this approach.
Commercial service becomes a reality
Commercial service was launched first by Sprint with their Airave CDMA offering in August 2008.
Softbank Japan announced the planned launch of their 3G femtocell in January 2009.
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