LTE femtocells ready to take off as API ecosystem expands
Nicolas Mokhoff, EE Times -- EDN, February 7, 2012
MANHASSET, NY—Vendors are rapidly preparing the LTE technology to meet operator demand, as witnessed by 17 manufacturers adopting the APIs for their upcoming LTE products, according to the Femto Forum.
The LTE APIs enable interoperability between LTE femtocell semiconductors and protocol software from different vendors.
The Femto Forum's partial list includes Airvana, AirWalk Communications, Broadcom, Cisco, Freescale, ip.access, mimoOn, Mindspeed, Picochip (now part of Mindspeed), Radisys, Tata Elxsi, Texas Instruments, and Ubiquisys.
According to a Informa Telecoms & Media survey, 60 percent of operators believe small cells are more important than macrocells in LTE deployments. Small cells were also the comfortable winner in a Rethink Research survey of the most important features for LTE-Advanced.
"As operators plan LTE networks, small cells, including femtocells, could play a critical role in enabling the fastest possible data services in metropolitan and rural public spaces, as well as in private homes and offices," said Alan Law, Chairman of the Femto Forum's LTE SIG, in a statement. "This positive uptake of the Forum's LTE API is one more sign of the growing importance of small cells."
The LTE API specifications are freely available from the Femto Forum's website.
The Femto Forum has 137 members including 63 operators representing more than 1.71 billion mobile subscribers which is 33 percent of the global total.
This story was originally posted by EE Times.
