This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) was a busy one for Airvana. Overall the show attendance was up – over 60,000 according to the GSMA people. This uptick probably results from the economy’s mild rebound from the economic downturn that had dampened attendance in the previous two years.
Airvana took the occasion of MWC to announce our LTE femtocell strategy, which emphasizes the need to support multi-mode 3G+LTE femtocells. In his speech at the Femto Forum’s Femtozone, Airvana VP of Marketing and Sales Amit Jain pointed out that, despite the move to LTE, 3G devices will dominate for the next five years at least, and therefore femtocells will need to support all the subscribers’ services, not just LTE data. During the Femto Forum press conference, Director of Product Marketing Josh Adelson (me) was quoted in the Show Daily saying that “3G is going to be around for probably as long as most of our careers.” Amit’s presentation, including the device penetration market data, plus Josh Adelson’s presentation on the Femto Forum Business Case Model, can both be downloaded here.
A crowded Fira, Mobile World Congress 2011
The other foundation of our MWC LTE announcement is our relationship with Freescale, and in particular our selection of their newly-announced QorIQ Qonverge base-station-on-chip silicon platform. This platform not only gives us the ability to support multiple air interfaces in a single femtocell, it also gives us the flexibility to scale from small consumer units to larger systems for enterprises and public spaces.
We also held a number of product customer and partner meetings based on our announcements, show activities and ongoing business. Thanks to all who visited us. Next it’s on to Orlando for CTIA.
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