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RELEASE Five
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DOCUMENT
002.05.03
Regulatory Aspects of Femtocells v2
December 2013
www.scf.io/
www.smallcellforum.org
Four
RELEASE Five
Small Cell Forum works to accelerate small cell adoption to change
the shape of mobile networks and maximize the potential of mobile
services.
We are not a standards organization but partner with organizations that inform
and determine standards development. We are a carrier-led organization. This
means our operator members establish requirements that drive the activities
and outputs of our technical groups.
Our track record speaks for itself: we have driven the standardization of key
elements of small cell technology including Iuh,FAPI/SCAPI, SON, the small cell
services API,TR069 evolution and the enhancement of the X2 interface.
At the time of writing, Small Cell Forum has more than 140 members, including
68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers 46 per
cent of the global total as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors,
content providers and innovative start-ups.
This document forms part of Small Cell Forums Release Five: Rural &
Remote that considers the opportunities and perceived barriers associated
with the deployment of small cells in rural and remote scenarios, including
disaster recovery, military installations, as well as verticals such as oil and gas,
maritime, aviation and automotive.
The Small Cell Forum Release Program has now established business cases
and market drivers for all the main use cases, clarifying market needs and
addressing barriers to deployment for residential, enterprise and urban small
cells.
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Scope
This white paper has been produced by the Small Cell Forum on behalf of its members
to assist regulators who wish to understand the benefits and potential regulatory
issues associated with femtocells.
Executive summary
This white paper has been produced by the Small Cell Forum on behalf of its members
to assist regulators who wish to understand the benefits and potential regulatory
issues associated with femtocells.
This paper includes a discussion of:
Improved access
Overall the paper highlights that while there are regulatory concerns surrounding
femtocells that most of these have been studied and found not to be an issue due to
the femtocell remaining under operator control and the strict authentication and
security mechanisms associated with femtocells. One potential area of regulatory
challenge highlighted is that of lawful intercept of traffic in Local IP Access (LIPA)
scenarios where femtocell traffic is not routed back into the operators core network.
Contents
1.
Introduction .....................................................................1
2.
What are Femtocells? .......................................................2
3.
Commercial launches........................................................5
4.
Standardisation ................................................................6
4.1
3GPP Femtocell Standardisation ............................................ 6
4.2
Broadband Forum Standardisation ......................................... 7
4.3
3GPP2 Femtocell Standardisation........................................... 7
4.4
WiMAX Forum Femtocell Standardisation ................................ 7
4.5
Open Mobile Alliance ............................................................ 8
4.6
Products ............................................................................. 8
5.
Regulatory benefits of Femtocells ....................................9
6.
Small Cell Forum Approach to Regulation .......................10
7.
Regulatory Issues Associated with Femtocells ...............11
8.
Status of femtocell regulation internationally ................13
9.
Request for information .................................................15
10.
Contact Information .......................................................16
Abbreviations ............................................................................17
References ................................................................................18
Tables
Table 3-1
Figures
Figure 2-1
Figure 2-2
1. Introduction
This white paper has been produced by the Small Cell Forum on behalf of its members
to assist regulators who wish to understand the benefits and potential regulatory
issues associated with femtocells.
Figure 2-1
The Small Cell Forum believes there are key attributes of femtocells, which distinguish
femtocells from other technologies.
A femtocell is a low-power wireless access point, incorporating all of the following
attributes:
Residential: Femtocells are installed indoors within the home by the end
user and may be stand-alone devices or integrated with other technology
such as residential gateways, delivering fixed-mobile convergence. Access to
the residential femtocell will often be closed - restricted to a specified group
of users but may also be open to all registered users in some cases.
Enterprise: Enterprise femtocell deployments are in small office/home office
situations, in branch offices or in large enterprise buildings. Femtocells for
this purpose typically support additional functionality than residential devices
such as handover between femtocells, integration with a Private Branch
Exchange (PBX) and local call routing. They are primarily used indoors, but
can also be used to serve a corporate campus. Installation is typically
managed by the carrier, but can be achieved by the enterprise itself or its IT
subcontractors. Access may be closed or open. Depending on the coverage
area of the access point the small cell may be better described as a picocell
than a femtocell.
Operator: A wide variety of applications where operators use femtocells to
solve specific coverage, capacity or service issues in both indoor and outdoor
environments. These are usually open access. They are installed by the
operator or by third parties under the operators direction. Examples of these
Figure 2-2
3. Commercial launches
As at December 2012, 46 operators had launched commercial services in 25 countries.
Further launches are expected throughout 2013 with a further 19 small cell
deployment commitments from operators listed in the fourth quarter 2012 Informa
Telecoms and Media Small Cell Market update for the Forum. Informa Telecoms &
Media also expects the femtocell market to experience significant growth over the next
few years, reaching just under 91 million small cells in the market by the end of 2016.
The latest list of operator commitments as at the end of 2012 is shown below. The full
Informa Telecoms and Media Small Cell Market Status December 2012 report is
available on the Small Cell Forums website.
Operator
Sprint
StarHub
Verizon Wireless
Vodafone
AT&T
SFR
NTT DoCoMo
China Unicom
Optimus
SingTel
Vodafone
TOT
Vodafone
Vodafone
Orange
MTC
Beeline
Cosmote
Vodafone
Free Mobile
China Mobile
O2
Vodafone
Table 3-1
Country
US
Singapore
US
UK
US
France
Japan
China
Portugal
Singapore
Ireland
Thailand
Australia
Italy
France
Russia
Russia
Greece
Portugal
France
China
UK
Germany
Operator
Vodafone
SoftBank
Vodafone
KDDI
Vodafone
Movistar
T-Mobile
MoldTelecom
Vodafone
SK Telecom
Network Norway
Yes Optus
Megafon
Vodafone
Orange
Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone
Mosaic
Three
Zain
Bouygues Telecom
Vodafone
Country
Spain
Japan
Qatar
Japan
Greece
Spain
UK
Molodova
New Zealand
South Korea
Norway
Australia
Russia
Hungary
Romania
Czech Republic
Netherlands
Romania
US
UK
Bahrain
France
Greece
4. Standardisation
The Small Cell Forum does not publish standards itself. However it acts as market
representation partners to 3GPP, 3GPP2 and WiMAX Forum, all of which are
standardising various forms of femtocells. We also have a cooperation agreement with
Broadband Forum which is standardising management protocols for femtocells,
starting with WCDMA [1].
A summary of status is provided below. It is notable that all of the major mobile
standards organisations have foreseen the need for femtocells to support future
mobile services and have worked actively to progress standards in a short time period.
A detailed overview of 3G femtocells standards is available in 044.01.01 Guidelines to
3G Standards www.scf.io/doc/044
4.1
4.2
4.3
Broadband Forum TR-196 Femto Access Point Service Data Model was
published in April 2009.
Issue 2 of TR-196 includes enhancements for LTE and CDMA2000 networks
and was published in November 2011. A new TR-262 was also issued
alongside this to define Femto Component Objects which captures generic
FAP status elements which might span multiple FAP services within the same
device.
The 3GPP2 formal publication of femtocell specifications was published during March
2010. The following list describes the technical specifications of the new standard:
4.4
The WiMAX Forum and the Femto Forum (now Small Cell Forum) announced the
publication of the first WiMAX femtocell standard during June 2010
(http://www.smallcellforum.org/newsstory-98-percent-of-mobile-operators-say-smallcells-essential-for-future-of-networks).
The specifications incorporate a security framework that allows WiMAX networks to
support a large number of access points via standard commercial IPSec based security
gateways. This phase of specifications also contains simple Self Organizing Network
(SON) capabilities to allow automatic configuration of large numbers of femtocells.
Future revisions will further enhance the SON capabilities to standardize automatic
interference management between femtocells and macro base stations.
The standard also incorporates support for three usage models to support different
deployment scenarios such as residential, enterprise and outdoor environments. The
Open Model allows the femtocell to operate like a normal WiMAX base station by
allowing anyone to use the service; Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) Closed allows a
Report title: Regulatory Aspects of Femtocells
Issue date: 01 December 2013
Version: 002.05.03
4.5
In March 2011 the Small Cell Forum released their first services API which defines how
to create and write new mobile applications based on small cell technologies. In
February 2012 the Forum announced that it was working with Open Mobile Alliance to
develop a small cell services API based on this foundation API from the Forum.
4.6
Products
All major small cell infrastructure vendors are members of Small Cell Forum, with
products including femtocell access points, access gateways, security gateways,
dedicated integrated circuits and software. A full showcase of femtocell products is
available on the Small Cell Forum website (www.smallcellforum.org).
10
11
12
In Japan, noting that there were several aspects of the existing regulations
which were not entirely aligned to femtocells, the Japanese regulators
conducted a series of consultations during 2008, and announced the outcome
in December 2008. The result was an amendment of relevant regulations
which allows end users to operate recovery and facility transfers of femtocell
base stations.
In June 2009 the UK communications regulator Ofcom provided clarity on its
approach to femtocell regulation [4]. It clarified that regulations on provision
of emergency call location and national roaming access to emergency calls
applied equally to femtocell users as to macrocell users. It also proposed to
vary the existing operator 3G licences to remove the requirement to keep
records of the location and technical details of femtocell equipment,
recognising that this may be impractical for a wide deployment of femtocells.
This clarity followed previous statements from Ofcom recognising the
potential significance of femtocells, such as [5]:
they form part of a vanguard of a long-promised technology that has the
potential to enable new forms of competition across communications
networks: fixed-mobile convergence.
13
technology that integrates the technical advantages of both wireless and fixline. From my point of view, Femtocell is worth to be adopted, and worth to
be promoted greatly., while Hou Ziqiang, Commission Member of Telecom
and Science Division, MIIT said Currently we are facing a very serious
challenge regarding to the dead zone of wireless telecommunications in cities,
especially of 3G network indoor service. We noticed that Femtocell is very
helpful and effective in resolving the weakness of network signal in cities.
From my point of view, Femtocell, as a solution of family-based station, will
have a very bright future.
In February 2010, the State Commission for Radio Frequencies (SCRF) was
reported to have simplified the procedures for registration of femtocells (up
to 25 mW in Moscow and 100 mW elsewhere) to permit their mass market
introduction [8].
In November 2010, the Taiwanese National Communications Committee
(their highest level communications regulatory body) announced that they
had approved the islands telecoms carriers to supply femtocell units to
enable them to extend mobile broadband connections to users houses [9].
In January 2011, the FCC announced that adding new spectrum is not
sufficient to meet traffic demand and that technologies including femtocells
should be used, while a 35x increase in mobile traffic is expected in the next
5 years [10]:
We need to encourage more innovative and efficient uses of spectrum. Well
continue to encourage dynamic spectrum sharing and secondary markets for
spectrum, as well as development and deployment of femtocells, smart
antenna
technology, and devices that can access unlicensed spectrum like Wi-Fi to
off-load traffic from cellular networks.
14
15
16
Abbreviations
3GPP
3GPP2
CDMA
GSM
ICNIRP
IEEE
IMT
ITU-R
LTE
OMA
PBX
WCDMA
WiMAX
17
References
1
Broadband Forum TR-196 Femto Access Point Service Data Model. This
document specifies the data model for Femto Access Point remote management
purposes.
2
Femtocells and Health, Small Cell Forum (with GSMA and MMF), SCF 01.001.02,
scf.io/doc/001
3
Radio Spectrum Committee, Regulatory Aspects of Femtocells. RSCOM(08)40,
European Commission, 2008.
4
Ofcom and Femtocells: Regulation Principles, Ofcom, Femtocells World Summit,
June 2009.
5
Ofcom, Mobile citizens, mobile - Adapting regulation for a mobile, wireless
world, August 2008
6
ITU-R Working Party 5D, Liaison statement to external organizations on
femtocells, Femto Access Nodes, Document 5D\TEMP\195(Rev.1), July 2009.
7
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12261_7-10369871-10356022.html
8
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.comnews.ru/index.cfm%3Fid%3D51059&prev=
_m
9
http://news.cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_34275.html
10 http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0120/DOC304191A1.txt
18