Femto Forum and WiMAX Forum Cooperate to Advance WiMAX Femtocells

AMSTERDAM - (BUSINESS WIRE) - The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, and the WiMAX Forum,^, the non-profit organization dedicated to the deployment and certification of WiMAX technologies, today agreed to collaborate on the development of WiMAX Femtocell Access Point (WFAP) specifications that will address topics such as end-to-end QoS, provisioning, network entry and authentication, power optimization, and mobility management. The specifications will also support for emergency services, lawful intercept, and location-based services.

Considering the growing demand for broadband wireless access inside homes and offices while enabling mobility and roaming across wide area networks, WiMAX operators and vendors have identified the need for femtocell solutions to increase the aggregate cell throughput per unit area and accordingly to improve the related quality of intra-cell links, particularly in indoor environments.

"Femtocells will provide a powerful new tool for WiMAX operators. By significantly increasing the number of cells in a wireless network using femtocells, operators can deliver a dramatically better service than using macro networks alone," said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. "This partnership will not only enable vendor interoperability and increased economies of scale thereby driving competition- it will also help to support far-reaching new femtocell applications."

"The operators in our community are looking toward femtocells to improve coverage and capacity while retaining the benefits of end-to-end Quality of Service management that is one of the great benefits of the WiMAX network," said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. "WiMAX specifications will support WiMAX certification of interoperable vendor products. We look forward to interactions with the Femto Forum to ensure that our specifications take advantage of its expertise regarding industry best practices for femtocell deployments."

About the WiMAX Forum

The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace. WiMAX Forum Certified products are fully interoperable and support broadband fixed, portable and mobile services. Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements. For more information about the WiMAX Forum and its activities, please visit www.wimaxforum.org.

WiMAX Forum is a registered trademark of the WiMAX Forum. WiMAX, the WiMAX Forum logo, "WiMAX Forum Certified," and the WiMAX Forum Certified logo are trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

About The Femto Forum

Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator's network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. The Femto Forum (www.femtoforum.org) was set up in 2007 to promote the wide-scale adoption of femtocells. The Forum supports and drives the adoption of industry wide standards and common architectures to enable the widespread adoption & deployment of femtocells by operators around the world. It directs and implements a multi-faceted marketing campaign raising the profile, driving technology development & deployment and promoting the potential of femto solutions among industry stakeholders, journalists, analysts, regulators, special interest groups, standards bodies and consumers.

Femto Forum
Nick Dillon
nick.dillon@femtoforum.org
+ 44 (0) 7725 761 450
or
WiMAX Forum
Scenna Tabesh
scenna@wimaxforum.org
+1-503-924-2926