Samsung Americas network VP says several North American carriers are poised for commercial femtocell launches

LAS VEGAS--Samsung’s femtocell pilot with Sprint wasn’t just an early fluke. A Samsung executive said today the Korean vendor has completed trials with several North American CDMA operators and expects nationwide rollouts of the home base station systems within the year, despite the fact that the technology is still far from being standardized.

“We’ll see multiple national launches this year,” said Tom Jasny, Samsung Telecommunications America vice president of wireless and broadband networks, at the Consumer Electronics Show. “A number of North American carriers have completed or are completing trials of our femtocell. So I’m confident we’ll see launches this year.”

Those are bold words, considering the cellular standards bodies, the 3GPP and the 3GPP2, are still in the middle of their standards process. Due to the economies of scale necessary to feed a large-scale rollout of millions of femtocells, almost everyone in the industry insists that standards are crucial for the technology’s success. Consequently, even the technology’s promoters such as the Femtocell Forum are saying we’ll only see trials in 2008. That hasn’t stopped the vendors from pumping out pre-standard femtocells, but the expectation is that they will be used for carriers’ initial trials while the commercial rollouts will demand standardized interoperable devices.

Femtocell software maker Continuous Computing said that large carriers like Verizon have indicated they will use pre-standard femtocells in their trials, but they’ll wait for standards-certified and interoperable equipment for their full commercial launches. “Verizon made it very clear they’re more worried about the solution fitting into their network evolution than the standard,” Continuous Computing product marketing manager Todd Mersch said in an earlier interview. “They would like to see their femtocells eventually form part of a standard someday. They’re willing to go forward with trials and take the standardized products when they are ready for their commercial launches.”

But Samsung’s Jasny said that operators (though he didn’t name names) are definitely willing to go further with a pre-standard product. Its Ubicell femtocell and gateway uses proprietary signaling, meaning Samsung is providing the whole architecture for Sprint in its Kansas City and Denver pilots. “I have no doubt that standards will eventually contribute to more economies of scale,” Jasny said, but Samsung’s pre-standard solution offers them an affordable and working solution that they can deploy today. “The current solution offers them value right now,” he said.

Samsung is rather unique among the large vendors in that it is building the end femtocells as well as the network equipment for operators. Many vendors like Nokia Siemens Networks are opting to develop femtocell gateways and software while leaving the end-point gateways to the highly commoditized consumer electronics markets. NSN is partnering with Airvana, Thomson and RadioFrame to build interoperable femtocells ahead of the standards. Jasny said Samsung’s tackling of multiple of both the infrastructure and the femtocell itself has given it a lead in the market, which has manifested itself in numerous CDMA trials.

“Putting together a partnered solution has complexities,” Jasny said. “I suspect the big vendors are catching up by partnering, but as the market develops, they are very likely to invest in their own solutions.”