LONDON — The prospects for commercial rollouts of femtocells –or small cellular home basestations—took a major step forward with the publication by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the Femto Forum and the Broadband Forum of the first global standards for the emerging technology.

The move — after "extremely productive cooperation between the three bodies, as well as equipment providers and mobile network operators" — paves the way for standardized femtocells to be produced in large volumes and enabling interoperability between different vendors' access points and femto gateways, Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum, told EE Times .

"This really fires the femto guns after some hard work in record time for the standardization effort," said Saunders. "What we asked for was for the 3GPP to standardize full protocols in Release 8 of their standards in 12 months, while they had the small matter of finalizing specs for Long Term Evolution (LTE) at the same time."

Work can now start in earnest on interoperability testing with products that are standardized, said Saunders. "We have already started developing and promoting test cases and scenarios in close collaboration with equipment vendors, and have been in touch with potential test facilities. I hope we can do this quicker than the typical two to three years it takes to achieve interoperability from the bedding down of a standard," Saunders told EE Times .

He added he is "very hopeful" that some European operators will soon commit to commercial deployments of femtocells this year. "Many have been trialing and got to grips with the technology. I am looking forward to an exciting 2009."

A recent survey by Heavy Reading suggested that lack of standardization was one of the main concerns of operators and a significant barrier to decisions regarding when and whether to deploy in their networks.