Femtos and Asia - news & event

Thanks to Andy & co at ip.access's 3Ginthehome blog for alerting me to this femto development from Japan. If I'm reading it correctly, NTT DoCoMo has been using a Mitsubishi femto since 2007for what appears to be network fill-in purposes, but is now "planning to use Mitsubishi's femtocell small base stations for its "Home Area" service, which links mobile phone networks with the broadband environment.". As far as I know, up until now there hasn't been a residential femto service launched in Japan, not least because of some tricky regulatory issues concerning the need for official inspection at commissioning of new cell sites. I'll be keeping a close eye on this one.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to keep an eye on it at Avren's next Femtocells Asia conference, which will be in Kuala Lumpur on 22-24 Sep, as I'll actually be at another event aimed at press/analysts (where I'm moderating a panel on - you guessed it - femtos).

The KL event has been moved from its original location of Bangkok because of the ongoing political turmoil in Thailand, but it's looking like a good line-up of presentations - not least from DoCoMo's competitor SoftBank. I'm expecting a few other early Asian adopters for femtos as well - most likely in markets like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and HK, but also possibly Malaysia & Thailand too. 

[Disclosure: Disruptive Analysis is an analyst partner for Avren Events - although that's a reflection of what I think have been some really good conferences they've put on. I'm hoping to be at their next one in Dallas in December.]