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You are here: Home Vendors Femtocells ODM
Femtocell Original Device Manufacturers
Written by David Chambers   
Sunday, 01 May 2011 17:16

ODM100ODMs (Original Device Manufacturers) are a class of business common in most high volume consumer electronics equipment. They specialise in taking equipment designs from established/proven vendors, and re-engineering them for mass production at low cost. This might involve changing some of the components, redesigning the internal electronics boards/layout and packaging format. With large factory capacity, strong buying power from their component suppliers, these companies can ramp up production capacity very quickly and meet delivery orders in very short timescales.

Many ODMs are based on the Far East, such as Taiwan and China, where they dominate many types of consumer electronics. Their products may be commissioned with branding and logos from specific customers, such as for larger network operators or well known consumer brands.

It is said that many ODMs have yet to gain practical field experience of femtocell RF (radio frequency) electronics (and especially the "secret sauce" of network optimisation algorithms), but most are familiar with Wi-Fi and/or cellular handsets.

There are several commercial models operating for ODMs in femtocells today:

  • They may work directly as subcontractor for one of the larger companies and build to their design and requirements. Alcatel-Lucent operates this way with several ODMs, specifying the hardware design, allowing the freedom for some cost engineering, and then providing the software which runs on the device. This allows Alcatel-Lucent to drive down costs, increase choice of device types/format and widen their supply base.
  • They may licence a design and build under their own name. Ubiquisys offer ODMs the opportunity to build products to their hardware design, which is then supplied directly to the end customer. These femtocells automatically download and run Ubiquisys software, licenced from them by the operator directly. ODMs such as Sercomm have designed and shipped product on this basis.
  • They may design their own, typically starting from a reference design (from one of the chipset vendors) and software stacks (from one of the stack suppliers). Further consultancy services can also be bought to finish, test and trial the devices.
  • They may buy the femtocell as a discrete plug-in module that fits into an existing consumer product, such as a DSL router or IPTV set top box. This requires less technical knowledge of femtocells, but additional functionality and value can be created by closer integration between the two systems. For example, ADB (arguably not an ODM themselves) have demonstrated how incoming calls on the femtocell can prompt the Caller ID to be shown onscreen on the TV.

ODMs known to be active in femtocell design and development (not a complete list) are listed below.

These can be identified from attendees at the "plugfests" organised by ETSI to test and validate interoperability using the Iu-h standard, with participants announced here, press articles, press releases from the various component manufacturers, and from the websites of these companies themselves.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Many companies have bought software stacks from the likes of Continuous Computing (who claim around 30 "design wins" for 3G femtocells to date), and these manufacturers by their nature do not all strongly market themselves (to end consumers) so are difficult to track.

Comments (4)add comment

Keith Day said:

0
You missed Tecom!
Tecom FC1020 residential
Tecom FC1060 enterprise
Tecom FC1080 outdoor (under development)

http://www.tecom.com.tw/en/index.php/product-solutions/carrier/femtocell/
 
May 05, 2011 | url
Votes: +0

ThinkFemtocell said:

0
...
@Keith: Thanks for pointing out. I've corrected this omission and added links to their website.

I'm happy to add any further amendments or corrections that viewers care to tell me about (either via a comment here or email through the contact page)
 
May 05, 2011
Votes: +0

Uday Parida said:

0
...
You have missed to add companies like Ablaze Wireless and Delta Networks.
 
July 21, 2011
Votes: +1

ThinkFemtocell said:

0
...
@Uday: Thanks for pointing that out - both those companies now added.
 
July 25, 2011
Votes: +0

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Last Updated on Monday, 25 July 2011 17:44
 

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