Mavenir provides Cellcom Femtocell Technology
Cellcom, a locally owned telecommunications company based in Green Bay, Wis., received the first Femtocell Industry Award for significant progress or commercial launch by a small carrier at the Femtocells World Summit in London last week. The other finalist for this prestigious and respected award was Chunghwa Telecom Co. Ltd. of Taiwan.
The Femto Forum, an independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, presented the award to Cellcom for deployment of the world's first IMS-based CDMA femtocell network for consumers and enterprises. "The judges were extremely impressed by the high quality and number of award submissions. In light of this, the judging process was extremely difficult, but Cellcom stood out," said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum. "The femtocell industry is
rapidly evolving as major advances are made in the technology, standards, services and applications – these awards recognize and reward this progress."
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. "Because Cellcom takes such great pride in responding to our customers' needs, we have taken a leadership role in deploying femtocell technology," said Rob Riordan, executive vice president and director of corporate development for Nsight, the parent company of Cellcom. "We are making great progress with our femtocell enterprise trial, which we expect to complete early in 2010."
Cellcom is partnering with Starent Networks of Tewksbury, Mass., Airwalk Communications and Mavenir Systems (both of Richardson, Texas) to provide femtocell enterprise technology. "Cellcom is an innovative, early adopter of femtocell networking, which provides us a great opportunity to collaborate with them in implementing next-generation services through femtocell technology," Ashraf Dahod, president and chief executive officer of Starent, said when announcing the company's partnership with Cellcom earlier this year.
