Huawei supplies China Unicom with femtocells

China Unicom - the world’s second-largest mobile operator by subscribers - is quietly rolling out a 3G femtocell service. Chinese vendor Huawei announced today it is providing kit for the operator’s ‘3G Inn’ service, designed to boost indoor mobile coverage.
As well as improved voice coverage, the femtocell (essentially a home base station) also boosts data performance, enabling theoretical peak HSPA download speeds of 7.2 Mb/s. The Huawei statement notes that “launched initially in Beijing, China Unicom expects to roll out this service nationwide.” It is not known whether Huawei is the sole femtocell supplier to China Unicom, although the vendor claims in the statement that it has deployed 40 femtocell networks around the world (more than any other company in the industry) to operator customers such as Vodafone, StarHub and “other top tier operators in Europe.”
Other commercial femtocell launches to date include SFR, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and SoftBank. Earlier this week T-Mobile confirmed that it will test femtocell interoperability over the next six months in its German labs with Ubiquisys and Huawei. Question marks remain over the business model for successful deployment of femtocells, as some people feel that users should not be expected to purchase a device that enhances indoor coverage when that responsibility arguably already lies with the operator.


source: GSMA MBB