Hay Systems Limited (HSL) is a privately held company based in Scotland. It is both a licenced telecom operator, having been especially successful in SMS gateway services and expanded its services to include roaming and core network operations. Several of its systems have been developed in-house, and are available for re-sale to other operators.
It first announced development of its own 1800MHz GSM femtocell product in 2008, with operator trials in 2009. The product started shipping to customers during 2010 but did not achieve significant takeup.
Hay Systems withdrew from the femtocell business in 2013, with their CEO tweeting:
Last batch (400 units) of our 2.75G femtocell stock being sold off. If interested in it then ping me.
— Mark Hay (@MarkHay) April 1, 2013
The femtocell used traditional 2G GSM technology, additionally supporting data services through GPRS and EDGE at data rates up to 414kbit/s. Initially targeted at 1800MHz spectrum band, a quad-band version (including 900MHz) was planned for 2011 but never developed.
HSL launched their GSM femtocell at the end of 2008 and supported trials starting with several operators. Their product offered:
- Up to 14 simultaneous voice calls(using half rate voice codec at 8kbit/s)
- Data rates up to 414kbit/s using EDGE (where handsets support this)
- Compatible with 2G (and dual mode 2G/3G) GSM handsets
- Integrates with an operator's existing core network through the standard A and Gb interfaces
HSL offer a "femtocell trial package" including product and technical support to run a trial. There was also a 3rd party developer program which enabled independent software vendors to create their own femtocell applications to run on the device.
HSL also offer their system as a managed service.
Mark Hay, Managing and Technical Director of HSL, explained their solution in a ThinkSmallCell interview here.
