10 Funny Femtocell Product Brand Names

AT&T's New Sponsor Sudafed - "Congestion Relief for Our Network"

SudaCell - Congestion Relief for the Network

SinuCell - Relief for your Network Congestion

MicroHell - Because we know your outdoor cell coverage is actually getting worse

Wi-For-Free - Why would we want to use a free back-haul service like Wi-Fi?

Never Drop - Or we pay for the call

Extenna - Extension for your iPhone 4 antenna that won't reach the cell tower

Ubiquity - Your phone should work everywhere our coverage maps claim

Auto Re-Dial - Because we know you will have to do it at least once

Show Me the Money - Just pay us and stop complaining about your poor service quality

Cell You Crap - When your $150 + $20 Per Month AT&T MicroCell drops calls

What are femtocells?  - They are 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE or Wi-Fi wireless device that has been specifically designed for cell phones and used it is used to enhance cell phone reception indoors and lower cell phone costs at the same time.  Femtocells are typically used to relieve network congestion, dropped calls and areas that have no cell phone reception.  

VCs Betting Femtocells Will Coexist with Wifi

The femtocell industry has been waiting to take off for almost a decade due to slow adoption from the telecom industry and reluctance from cable operators innovate.  It appears as if we are about to "cross the chasm" of growth into the mainstream consumer as the "femtocell" or "microcell" topic becomes more widely understood.  There has long been a healthy debate in the telecom industry if femtocells and Wi-Fi will even coexist as Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous throughout the world and is a viable offloading option for mobile phones. However, as we have all seen by AT&T's iPhone fiasco that control over the voice network seems to be most important as data speeds and capacity get larger and larger.  It also remains to be seen if the cable operators will continue to stick to their stance that Wi-Fi is their solution and they don't intend to purchase femtocells at this time.

Two leading femtocell developers based in the UK have seem to be getting the most traction around the world with carriers and have recently announced new funding rounds.  It is great to see VC's continuing to  fund the operations of these companies who are have been slugging it out for many years.  See our list of femtocell companies funded back in 2008.

Ubiquisys, a UK-based developer of 3G femtocells, has just raised $9 million in new VC funding and a total of $57 million so far.  The new money is going to be used to meet the demand from many carriers testing across the world.  Yasuda Enterprise Development Co. led the round, and was joined by return backers Advent Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Atlas Venture. The latest round comes from a combination of 5 new investors: Continents Consulting Group (5CCG), Yasuda Enterprise Development Co., Advent Ventures , Accel Partners , and Atlas Venture. Ubiquisys, which also has Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and T-Mobile Venture Funds as strategic investors, has its femtocell technology commercially deployed at SoftBank Corp. in Japan and SFR in France through its systems integrator partner NEC Corp. Rumor has it that AT&T may be announced soon in the US as well.  Read full article on Light Reading.

PicoChip recently raised $20 million influx of funds. UK femtocell chip maker picoChip Designs Ltd. has announced that it has raised an additional $20 million in equity funding and sold 1 million femto chips. All of picoChip's existing investors participated in the latest funding round, namely Atlas Venture , Highland Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Pond Venture Partners, Rothschild, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. and Scottish Equity Partners. With the new money, picoChip wants to hire more engineers in its development centers in Bath, England and Beijing. The company plans to increase its 150-employee base by between 25 percent and 30 percent. PicoChip's has sold 1 million femtocell chips.

List of Femtocell Manufacturers

The combined list of femtocell manufactures have raised approximately $270M from various VCs and strategic investors over the last 2 years.  This list was compiled using Crunch Base numbers as well as news articles.  My biggest concern for these companies is the lack of consumer awareness that the companies and their products have in the marketplace.  How many consumers have heard of any of these companies below discussed in the media or know what a femtocell is?  The answer is virtually zero.

• Airvana: $83 million (AIRV) IPO and now going private for $530M purchased by 72 Mobile Holdings, S.A.C. Capital and Blackstone Group
• Vanu: $32 million Norwest, Charles River, Tata
• PicoChip: $31 million AT&T, Intel, Highland, Atlas, Samsung
• RadioFrame: $28 million Eastven, Vantage Point, Ignition, Samsung 
• Tatara: $26 million Highland, North Bridge
• Ubiquisys: $25 million from Accel, Atlas and Google & T-Ventures 
• Kineto: $15.5 million round from Venrock, SutterHill, Oak, Motorola & NEC
• Percello: $12 million Granite, T-Venture, Vertex
• AirWalk: $10 million TL Ventures, Seven Rosen, Nedelco
• ip.access: $10 million Scottish Equity, ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm

For the last two years I have noticed a pattern of frustration from executives at these companies who vent their frustration having to sell their femtocells through the carrier channels.  It troubles me that all of these companies continue rely on incompetent marketers (the carriers) to sell their products and educate consumers that they exist.  Cannibalization of your customers marketing just might be the only way to get ahead in business.   I strongly suggesting that each of these companies will need to "steal a page from the Google Nexus One Phone" and start doing some demand side research of who needs the product and where.  Its obvious that the carriers have very little financial incentive to push femtocells to their customers for fear of cannibalizing their existing businesses.  Yes I am suggesting that femtocell marketing executives start thinking like Cannibal Lecter in order to make their companies successful. Sometimes cannibalization of your own customers is the only way to succeed and rise about the crowd.

Femtocell Companies Funded In 2008

The femtocell market has seen a few large investments in recent months, showing that the industry has strong market potential and there are lots of home and commercial dead zones to fix. Prominent players (e.g. Airvana, Ticker: AIRV IPO in July of 2007 for $60M, picoChip $27M, Ubiquisys ($25M) were funded in 2007, the emerging industry appears to be reasonably well capitalized for the turbulent times ahead and growth. Investors are hoping for more commercial deployments of femtocells during the next 12 months, setting the stage for mass market deployments during 2010. Here are a few companies that were successful at raising money in 2008.

October 2008 - Kineto Wireless $15.5M, which includes substantial amounts from NEC and Motorola.

September 2008 - Percello raised $12M to fund development of their femtocell chipset, bringing to $18M the total investment raised.

August 2008 - RadioFrame raised $26M to expand their picocell and femtocell range, bringing investment up to $100M since 2001.

May 2008 - Qualcomm and other venture capitalists invested an undisclosed amount in ip.access

January 2008 - Airwalk received $10M

Updated list from 3G in Home Blog

• Airvana: IPO
• AirWalk: $10 m
• ip.access: strategic investment from ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm
• Kineto: $15.5 million round including Motorola & strategic investment from NEC
• Percello: $12 million
• picoChip: strategic investment from Samsung
• RadioFrame: $28 million
• Tatara: $6.5 million
• Vanu: $32 million
• Ubiquisys: $25 million round including VC money and Google as a strategic investor; further strategic investment from T-Ventures.

DeadCellZones.com sits in a unique position based on our brand recognition and utility to educate the market about femtocell technology as control of in-building-coverage is suddenly in the hands of consumers and not carriers any longer. The masses are still not very familiar with the technology but its starting to trickle down to early adopters and we hope to provide a source of information for these companies where the coverage pain exists.