Headquartered in Paris, France and with annual revenues of 16 Billion Euros, this global vendor of mobile network infrastructure, handsets, DSL modems and WiFi access points is well placed to have all the components for a solution available inhouse. Their femtocell solution was selected by Vodafone UK for their commercial launch on 1 July 2009, the first European femtocell commercial deployment. They are one of the largest and most successful femtocell solution providers worldwide, with many live commercial networks and market trials.

Their marketing position is to encourage the term "small cells" rather than femtocells, believing that an additional network layer of short range/small cells is the only practical means to deliver the high capacity and local coverage demanded today. This avoids discriminating between femtocell and picocell or other terms, encompassing all types and forms of short range cellular basestation. It allows them to compete with other RAN (Radio Access Network) vendors, becoming an additional vendor for networks already with other encumbent suppliers for their outdoor macrocell basestations.

Alcatel-Lucent have been involved from an early stage in pioneering and developing a complete femtocell solution.

Previously developed and promoted a 2G femtocell product in the late 1990’s, but this did not succeed due to high cost and the requirement for accurate transmission frequency (which required an expensive crystal oscillator part).

Launched the Femto Base Station Router (BSR) in 2007, a platform that combines 3G UMTS radio access and packet core network in a single compact unit. The hardware was developed by SAGEM with femtocell software and the femtocell gateway itself developed by Alcatel-Lucent themselves.

Alcatel-Lucent have increased their choice of femtocell hardware suppliers, introducing two Far Eastern vendors in February 2010. All are designed to a standard specification and run the same software (written by Alcatel-Lucent themselves), but each vendor can modify and optimise the design to reduce cost and make it physically more attractive.

Many live networks are already using this system, including many Vodafone subsiduaries, and with a further 20 trials and pilots also in progress.

The range of femtocell access points (under the name 9360 series) include residential, enterprise and outdoor (metro-femto) varieties, which all run the same software internally and are connected to the same femtocell gateway. The capacity (i.e. number of concurrent calls) and range (i.e. RF power) vary with each product. A sample of the range is shown below.

The model below can also be wall mounted.

Alcatel-Lucent Small Cells Product Website

Wilson Street - An Alcatel-Lucent small cell thought leadership and blog site

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