South Korean equipment vendor founded in 2000 and supplying mobile operators since 2004. Starting with development of a wireless centrex (office switchboard) system for the CDMA mobile network, their product range includes both core network products (voice switches, packet data gateways) through radio access network equipment. All products are IP based. They have been successful in Korean (including SK Telecom) and Japanese (KDD) markets.
Contela first announced their 3G UMTS femtocell at Mobile World Congress in February 2008, showing a demonstration model. This was deployed commercially by South Korea Telecom (SKT) in early 2011 to add data capacity in public areas.Their femtocell also incorporates Wi-Fi access and is designed to handle data traffic - voice calls are automatically handed off to the macrocell network.
Unusually, Contela supply the entire femtocell solution - including small cell gateway and management system. Their 3G small cell range includes residential, enterprise and outdoor models with a capacity of 8 (residential/outdoor) to 16 (enterprise) simultaneous calls. Their 4G/LTE product is also a complete solution, connecting directly to the core network.
Their 3G product is based on Mindspeed (formerly Picochip) chipset. Their security gateways are sourced from GENBAND (small) and SMEC (large). The system is dimensioned to handle up to 100,000 access points per gateway/management system.
Their 3G solution architecture is compatible with the Iu-h and TR.069 interface standards, and Contela have participated in ETSI plugfests to validate interworking. They claim this is the first commercially deployed Iu-h femtocell solution.
Their 4G/LTE solution includes both residential and enterprise access points, with a dual-mode 3G/LTE model also on offer. Early models were based on Mindspeed's Transcede broadband chipset although later models may have been based on other platforms. Wi-Fi is an option, and has actively been deployed for enterprise and public access use. SKT announced plans to deploy more than 10,000 LTE/Wi-Fi small cells in June 2012.
Their solution is described in their brochure which provides more technical details.
