UMA Today Magazine: UMA Jumpstarts Femtocells Page 20

Franks: In creating the Femto Forum, we're bringing

together the foremost femtocell equipment vendors with
major global mobile operators that are assessing the
technology. Our main goal is to support and promote
femtocell deployment worldwide by developing technology
solutions that address operators' challenges.

The forum will promote open standards, market

education and ecosystem development. We're pleased to
have found Professor Simon Saunders, who has more than
20 years wireless industry experience, to really lead the
charge. If femtocells succeed, Ubiquisys will as well.

UMA Today: What do you think are the main
advantages for operators to use femtocells?

Franks: The mobile telecoms industry has always

grappled with two major issues, coverage and capacity.
This is as true today as ever with 3G networks providing
poor in-building coverage and major capacity concerns
in the operator's backhaul network meaning that mobile
broadband services cannot support widespread usage.

Femtocell technology represents a long-term fix to these

issues as optimum coverage can be delivered to all homes
where the majority of mobile calls are made, and the
backhaul bottleneck can be relieved as mobile operators
take advantage of their subscriber's own broadband
connections.

At the same time, by effectively removing the operator's

costly radio and transport network costs, the consumer can
be offered the kinds of cheap phone calls that formerly only
transport-less network operators, such as Skype and Von-
age, could deliver.

Femtocells are also uniquely positioned to support

a range of new services for consumers, as well as just
providing much better and potentially zero cost internet
access from their cell phones when at home.

With femtocells being able to work with standard 3G cell

phones, they open up they handset choice for consumers
wanting "Universal Mobile Access."

UMA Today: Seeing as how this is a UMA
magazine, please tell us, do UMA and femtocells
have a future together?

Franks: The simple answer is yes. As a technology for

integrating femtocells into the core network, UMA brings
a lot to the table. It's already been deployed, it has a proven

security approach, a lot of thought has gone into discovery
and registration of devices, and it scales well. UMA is
really helping accelerate the femtocell market.

As you know, UMA was specifically developed to allow

IP devices to connect securely over a broadband DSL
connection and therefore cope with the associated latency,
jitter and security issues. And while UMA was designed
with unlicensed access in mind, it actually solves the exact
same problems associated with femtocell deployment.

The advantages of this approach are that it employs

genuine, open standard interfaces and that services
implemented in the existing core will automatically be
available to the femtocells. In addition, as the UMA-based
architecture is an Iu-over-IP protocol, it means local voice
and data can be offloaded in the home, supporting in-
home services such as streaming from a media box, while
voice and data traffic can be deciphered and manipulated,
delivering local call routing and control applications for
devices in the home.

Certainly there is still some work to be done for UMA to

fully support 3G femtocells, but it's already working. The
industry needs to come together around some standard
approach, and UMA seems like an ideal and obvious
choice.

UMA Today: We have to ask... what about
dual-mode Wi-Fi phones? Aren't femtocells
directly competitive with them? How will this
battle play out?

Franks: Certainly some operators will launch a

femtocell service first and others have already chosen to
launch dual-mode handset services. Each has specific
advantages.

In the long run, there is room for both solutions. But

the real advantage comes in selecting UMA. A common
UMA infrastructure supports both applications. That
takes some pressure off the short term decision about
femtocells or Wi-Fi phones.

UMA Today: Will, thanks for your time.
That was a great answer for our "UMA Today"
publication.

Franks: Thank you.

INTERVIEW

UMA TodAY

FALL 2007