picoChip and Kineto team in UMA-enabled femtocell market

Companies collaborate on UMA-enabled femtocell reference design

Kineto Wireless, Inc., the key innovator and leading supplier of UMA technology, and picoChip today announced the companies are working to develop a UMA-enabled Femtocell reference design. The reference design, based on picoChip’s industry leading single-chip solutions and Kineto’s industry leading UMA client software will enable 3G femtocells to overcome network integration barriers to accelerate mass market adoption.

Femtocells are low-cost cellular access points for mobile operators looking to provide enhanced, in-building 3G coverage within homes and small businesses. Recent analysis from ABI Research estimates that by 2011 there will be 102 million users of Femtocell products on 32 million access points worldwide.

Made possible through recent advances in low-cost 3G silicon, as well as advanced radio frequency planning techniques, femtocells are receiving interest from operators globally. However, the key to sustainable, mass-market femtocell adoption is a standards-based core-network connectivity solution that supports cost-effective large-scale deployments.

“UMA technology overcomes the technical challenges for network operators trying to deploy and manage millions of femtocells in the network,” said Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing for picoChip. “By collaborating with Kineto Wireless, the leader in UMA technology, the companies are able to develop an advanced reference design for femtocells to enable mass-market adoption.”
The 3GPP UMA standard is uniquely suited to address the access network challenges of femtocells. UMA was developed to enable millions of dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi handsets to integrate seamlessly and with minimal impact with the mobile operator’s existing core network infrastructure. With UMA-enabled femtocells, operators will have a standardized, cost effective and scalable core network interface to fully realize the coverage, capacity and cost benefits of 2G and 3G in-building cellular access points.

“We are pleased to be collaborating with picoChip, a leader in the Femtocell market,” said Gary Sarson, vice president of business development for Kineto Wireless. “Combining UMA with picoChip’s low cost silicon and HSDPA software sets the stage for a robust Femtocell market.”

About picoChip
picoChip, located in Bath, England, is dedicated to providing innovative, flexible wireless solutions to help equipment makers minimize time-to-market, costs, and system power consumption.

The heart of the company’s offering is a scaleable, multi-processor baseband IC that combines the computational density of a dedicated ASIC with the programmability of a traditional high end Digital Signal Processor. This radically reduces both development time and materials cost and enables the strategic goal of the “Software-defined Radio”. The company has the most comprehensive reference designs in the industry, with complete, standard-compliant solutions for both UMTS (including HSDPA) and WiMAX (802.16d upgradeable to 802.16e).
www.picochip.com

About Kineto Wireless
Kineto Wireless is the key innovator and leading supplier of Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) Technology, the 3GPP standard for mobile/Wi-Fi convergence. Mobile operators around the globe are selecting UMA to offer subscribers seamless, high-performance mobile voice, data, and IMS experiences on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. As the leading provider of UMA Technology, Kineto supplies core network solutions through OEM partnerships with major network infrastructure providers, and also provides UMA-compliant software, development tools and support services to mobile silicon/stack suppliers, mobile handset developers, and broadband terminal adaptor/wireless access point vendors. Kineto was recently named as the recipient the 2006 Financial Times (FT) World Communications Award for innovation in technology for its role in UMA. For more information, please visit www.kineto.com.