Nokia Siemens Now Has Three Femtocell Partners

Nokia Siemens Networks has announced a partnership with femtocell developer RadioFrame Networks, bringing the number of femtocell relationships it has announced to three.

The deal with RadioFrame will see NSN provide its Femto Gateway to operators alongside the OmniRadio femtocell from the Redmond, Washington-based developer.

Femto cells are small cellular access points that provide enhanced coverage, specifically in residential environments, enabling operators to provide fixed-mobile convergence and other services, such as IPTV. Standards are still evolving in the space, and in their absence, some big equipment vendors like Ericsson offer a closed-loop, proprietary system comprising the gateway and CPE base station, whereas Nokia Siemens provides the gateway and seeks to work with multiple CPE offerings.

Before the RadioFrame deal, NSN announced a deal in July with French consumer electronics vendor Thomson, with whose femto-enabled residential gateway for the home it will work with, deploying the Femto Gateway in the carrier network. It followed that announcement with another deal in September with Airvana, a US vendor of CDMA femtocells that earlier this year bought into the GSM world by acquiring UK developer 3Way. The agreement with Nokia Siemens is for the equipment from that acquisition, the UMTS Home Base Station femtocell.