Motorola inks OEM femtocell deal with Airvana

Airvana this week finalized an OEM agreement with Motorola that Airvana says will allow carriers to provide Motorola femtocell-based services in any environment that has a broadband connection.

Airvana, a femtocell vendor based in Chelmsford, Mass., says that it will be Motorola’s official OEM for its Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) femtocells and will provide Motorola with femto network gateways to handle mobile security and performance issues.

Femtocells are small cellular access points that route nearby wireless voice traffic through pre-existing broadband connections, thus providing VoIP for wireless handsets that can both improve call quality and save money by letting users make calls without using up their cell minutes. Airvana’s CDMA femtocell employs two different radio modules, one that supports the EV-DO protocol for 3G wireless data transmission, and another that supports the 1xRTT protocol for voice transmission. Airvana says that its OEM deal with Motorola is the first agreement it has signed for its CDMA femtocells, which it hopes will officially hit the market in the second half of 2008.

The femtocell itself is only part of what Motorola will be adopting; Airvana’s femto network gateway is just as crucial to the technology’s success, says Paul Callahan, Airvana’s vice president of business development. The Universal Access Gateway, which Airvana began putting through trials late last year, is equipped to provide a secure tunnel that authenticates and inspects all mobile traffic before sending it over the carrier’s network. When the femto network gateway is deployed, it will give users access to mobile voice and data services through dual-mode mobile/Wi-Fi handsets and laptops that connect through Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as existing 2G and 3G handsets that connect through femtocells.

“Femtocells represent a major turning point in the wireless industry, both in terms of how wireless carriers build and operate their networks and how consumers experience their wireless voice, video and data services,” says Motorola senior vice president Fred Wright.

Femtocells have generated a fair amount of hype over the past year, as major industry players such as Cisco and NEC have both started investing in femtocell technology. A report by ABI Research shows that femtocells are set to become very popular with consumers, and projects that there will be shipments of about 36 million femtocells in 2012.