BARCELONA--The business case for deploying femtocells in large volumes still may be developing, but vendors attending the 3GSM World Congress here are clearly excited about the next big small thing in wireless, with several product and partnership announcements already made.

Tatara Systems and 3Way Networks announced at the show a partnership to develop and sell an all-IP based femtocell convergence solution for mobile network operators. The solution will be built on 3Way's Home Base Station access point product with Tatara's Mobile Service Convergence server and other products.

Femtocells, smaller than picocells or microcells and intended primarily for residential deployment, can benefit from an all-IP approach, the companies said, because they can use standard interfaces like SIP to connect seamlessly to an operator's IP-based core network. "Tatara and 3Way share the same vision that the all-IP approach provides true femtocell convergence for mobile operators," said Simon Albury, managing director of 3Way Networks, in a statement.

Among other femtocell announcements at 3GSM, picoChip announced an HSUPA-based femtocell reference architecture. HSUPA provides better uplink performance in 3G mobile networks, as well as lower latency to support applications such as voice.

In addition, NEC announced at the show that it is partnering with both Tatara and Ubiquisys to incorporate the femtocell solutions of those companies into NEC's home gateway architecture.

ZTE and Samsung also announced a partnership to collaborate on a femtocell solution. Read more about the partnership here.