ip.access passes half million milestone in 3G small cells
Confirms position as number one femtocell technology supplier one million milestone predicted for 2012
Cambridge, 16th August 2011: UK-based small cell technology developer and manufacturer, ip.access, today confirmed that its Oyster 3G femto technology is powering more than 500,000 Access Points deployed live in homes, offices and mobile network hotspots worldwide.
Such is the rate of growth and deployment of the company’s small cell technology; it expects to pass the one million milestone next year. The announcement comes after recent independent market analysis from Infonetics Research confirmed that ip.access has the leading market share of femtocell units deployed.
Oyster 3G technology from ip.access is used in its femtocell and picocell deployments worldwide. The company numbers more than 60 operator partners for its 3G and 2G small cell technology. Major customers include Cisco, which uses Oyster 3G core technology in its 3G MicroCell solution for AT&T in America – the world’s largest consumer femtocell roll-out.
Making the announcement, Simon Brown, ip.access CEO said: “The 3G small cell market is now really accelerating – consumer femtocells, enterprise and retail picocells, public hot-spots and the move towards metro-zones on 3G and 4G networks are all driving the adoption of small cell technology”.
“Nothing gives a bigger coverage and capacity boost – or delivers more from the available radio spectrum – than the move to small cell technology. At ip.access, we are firmly in the vanguard of both the deployment and the development of small cell solutions”, he said.
ip.access’ Oyster 3G system was among the earliest commercial femtocell solutions when it was first launched in 2007. Today, as the company expects to see deployments more than double in the next 12 to 18 months, Oyster 3G technology is integral to the company’s full product line which includes C-class residential units, S-class Access Points for shops and small offices, and the E-Class enterprise picocells for larger offices and public locations.
Recently, ip.access also announced the OysterCatcher solution, a remote diagnostics and management tool which can fine tune deployed femtocells and picocells to help improve performance and adapt to changing radio environments.
“Our experience of mass market deployment and the ability to scale up product solutions give us an undoubted edge in the market”, said Brown. “We have learned, for example, that even apparently quite small changes – such as new software release on a smartphone handset – might require changes to femtocell radio parameters. With OysterCatcher, we can capture this information, process it and remotely fine tune the small cell to cope with any changes”.
“It is developments such as these that have fuelled our growth to the half million milestone and will continue to enable ip.access to successfully deliver market scale and grow past one million deployments next year”, he added.
About ip.access
Headquartered in Cambridge, UK, ip.access ltd (www.ipaccess.com) is a leading manufacturer of cost-effective picocell and femtocell infrastructure solutions for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3G. These solutions bring IP and cellular technologies together to drive down costs and increase coverage and capacity of mobile networks.
ABI Research ranks ip.access as the world’s number 1 picocell vendor; its nanoGSM® and nano3G™ picocell solutions provide 2G and 3G coverage and capacity for offices, shops and (using satellite backhaul) passenger aircraft, ships and remote rural areas. nanoGSM is the world’s most deployed picocell, with live installations in more than 50 networks around the world and growing.
ip.access is also the company behind the multi-award winning Oyster 3G™ femtocell technology, which dramatically improves the user experience for 3G services at home. Oyster 3G is the core femtocell technology in AT&T’s 3G MicroCell.
ip.access counts Scottish Equity Partners, Rothschild Gestion, Intel Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm and Motorola Ventures among its shareholders.
