Founded in 2001, RadioFrame is based in Redmond, Washington, USA. An OEM vendor of femtocells and also UNC aggregation device. Originally developed a WiFi hub in 2001, and then expanded to include iDEN (a mainly North American mobile system operated by NexTel and others). Whilst already offering 2G GSM and iDEN products using 3rd party hardware/chipsets, they withdrew from 3G femtocell development and will focus on offering their own femtocell chipset capable of both 2G and 3G UMTS operation to other femtocell vendors.

Their femtocells incorporate multiple switched ports router, firewall, IPsec tunnelling, remote fault management and configuration (using the TR-069 standard). They announced plans for interworking with Nokia's femto gateway, and would also rely on Nokia to provide the central management systems.

RadioFrame's medium term approach is to develop all of the femtocell technology in-house. This includes the chipsets, software stack (including signalling). However, they don't offer their own femto-gateways or management systems. They believe this strategy will allow them to compete aggressively on cost, because they don't have to pay to buy-in other vendors components. However, a counter-argument  would be that common component vendors would have savings through higher volumes. Their 2nd generation OmniRadio microprocessor was announced in May 2008.

They demonstrated a plastic space-model of their forthcoming 3G femtocell at Mobile World Congress in February 2008. This has an ethernet port on the back to connect to a broadband router. The design is small and stylish, but the lack of actual working product suggests that commercial product will be behind other vendors. Their roadmap includes a full home-hub with DSL and WiFi.

Other femto vendors have already announced partnerships and products with existing DSL modem suppliers, such as Netgear, Thomson, Motorola etc. RadioFrame could therefore be at a disadvantage in the race to provide a complete one-box solution.

RadioFrame has an existing successful 2G picocell business, which includes supplying Orange for their Onsite Coverage solution for small remote businesses.

It has been reported that RadioFrame architecture also supports multiple technologies simultaneously in the same rack. Different blades (processor cards) can be inserted into a rack supporting any (or all of) WiFi, iDEN, cdma2000 or GSM. I can't see that this feature would be of value to any but a very niche market, but may help with the overall product design and costs.

RadioFrame raised additional investment of $28 million with a mix of equity and debt funding in August 2008, bringing to a total of over $100 million the investment since 2001. Investors include Ericsson Venture, Ignition Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Plainfield Asset Management, COM investments (the personal investment arm of wireless pioneer Craig McCaw), Samsung, and Innovacom (formerly Orange Ventures).

In March 2009, Unstrung reported their withdrawal from 3G femtocell access points,and will concentrate on supplying their in-house developed femtocell chipset to other vendors. They will continue with their 2G picocell products for GSM and iDEN systems, sold through Nokia Siemens Networks. They closed their European office at the same time.

RadioFrame company website

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