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Pioneering US Femtocell Conference To Tackle Challenges of ROI, Consumer Appetite, Mass Market Deployment and Unit Cost.

Major US, Asian and European Carriers and leading market analysts to address 2nd International Femtocell Conference hosted by Avren Events: Dallas, Tx, 5th - 7th December 2007 .

Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, T-Mobile, AT&T, Softbank, Telefonica, 02 join analysts Gartner, Current Analysis, ABI Research, Caris (Wall Street), to review the business case, technical challenges, consumer proposition, regulatory framework, trials and deployment status of the Femtocell – arguably the most significant (disruptive) innovation in the fixed mobile convergence play to date.

If all goes to plan, Femtocells, router sized cellular home basestations, will be deployed globally in our homes from 2008, with early trials and limited consumer deployments well underway in Europe, USA and Asia. The Femtocell is seen by mobile carriers as the ideal vehicle to give consumers high speed data, VoIP and conventional voice services in the home with reduced infrastructure cost, reduced tariff , and perhaps more significantly, as a bundled communications package including the broadband pipe which is used for the femtocell backhaul, displacing the incumbent wireline carrier.

Equally, wireline carriers see Femtocells as the ideal extension of their fixed offering, providing they have access to some wireless spectrum on which to operate. Allocation of 700MHz frequencies around the globe are a key battle ground for fixed and mobile carriers with Femtocells in mind.

Not all however is rosy in the Femtocell camp. There is a robust debate amongst proponents as to the best network access technology to deploy, how to mitigate interference, support/inhibit roaming, etc and still many analysts who do not believe that the business case stacks up against the main alternative which is WiFi enabled handsets – these debates will be addressed both on and off the floor at the forthcoming conference.

With Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung, Huawei all presenting femtocell solutions at the event, together with a number of specialist established vendors and start-ups, (ip.access, RadioFrame, Tatara Systems, Ubiquisys, Airvana, Reefpoint, Kineto Wireless, picoChip, Continuous Computing, Airwalk), there can be no doubt that the vendor community sees significant business in Femtocells and potential volumes for Femtocells that approach handset sales if the market analysts are accurate in their forecasting.

With the rush to get the Femtocell into the hands of consumers, the standards process has inevitably been bypassed for early trials and deployments, however both 3GPP, 3GPP2 and the newly formed Femto Forum are all working hard to bring the benefits of regulatory and technical standardisation to the arena. The Femto Forum plenary meeting will be held at the conference with an exclusive update given to conference delegates by the working group chairmen.

The impact of Femtocells on the Macro Cellular network – reduced infrastructure cost, frequency planning, code allocation, interference, etc is also a core theme of the 6th International Basestation Conference to be held on 3rd & 4th December in the same conference hotel.

For more information on the conference please contact Andrew Bateman, CEO Avren Events, +44 1225 7233349 or Carole Mayhew, Marketing Director, +44 (0)1761 492547 or visit http://www.avrenevents.com