Nokia Siemens Networks today announces a novel approach to home access by launching its 3G Femto Home Access solution with open interfaces and a new network element, Femto Gateway. The new solution will boost the overall femto cell ecosystem and enable operators to enhance their 3G service offering and coverage, as well as the consumers’ experience at home.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ 3G Femto Home Access solution is a new way of enhancing WCDMA 3G coverage in homes, making it easy for consumers to enjoy high quality 3G services with any standard WCDMA terminal. The solution allows the operators to reinforce their relationship with their customers because it enables attractive services and tariffs to subscribers at home and encourages the use of WCDMA 3G services.

“Our novel Femto Home Access solution meets what the market really needs. It is a strong combination of telecommunications end-to-end expertise, femto cell know-how and consumer mass market understanding,” says Ari Lehtoranta, Head of Radio Access, Nokia Siemens Networks. “We are driving a network solution with standard and open interfaces to enable open innovation and variety of supply for the Femto customer premises equipment.”

The Nokia Siemens Networks 3G Femto Home Access solution introduces a new network element, Femto Gateway. Femto Gateway does not require changes in the operators’ existing core network, as it connects to the core network over a standard interface. Furthermore, by extending this standards-based approach towards the Femto Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) at homes, the Femto Gateway will allow customer equipment from multiple vendors to be connected to it. The Femto Gateway will support any Femto CPE certified by Nokia Siemens Networks to conform with the interface. Nokia Siemens Networks will co-operate with Femto CPE vendors to ensure interoperability of their equipment to the Nokia Siemens Networks interface.

Femto CPE’s use IP broadband backhaul and are easy to install at home in the same way as xDSL/WiFi modems. The Femto cell functionality can be packaged to the operator-specific home gateway devices together with other functionalities, like WiFi, Ethernet routing or storage.

Trials of the 3G Femto Home Access solution will start at the beginning of 2008, and commercial deployments are planned for the third quarter of 2008.