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Backoffice & OSS
Femto Forum crowns TR-069 protocol as new management standard
Selection could jumpstart Forum's push toward common practices industrywide
by Doug Allen
It’s official: The Femto Forum has declared its members will be using
the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 popular protocol to manage femtocell
devices.
Surprising no one, TR-069 was the odds-on favorite for the
role, being deployed already in roughly 30 million devices that
support the 2/3G service. Indeed, the Forum noted that many members
had already decided to go with TR-609 for femtocell management,
especially diagnostics and troubleshooting. TR-069 already supports
(self)-installation, a key requirement for widespread deployment, and
provisioning functions including remote diagnostics and firmware
upgrades, as well as RF interference reduction; work is ongoing to add
new functionality to the standard near-term.
Given its widespread installed base, choosing TR-069 may seem like a
no-brainer, but it does give the Forum a little momentum as a
forward-looking body and stresses its credibility and relevance (see
Stepping forward with standards). After welcoming several new
members to the fold, the emerging organization’s membership now runs
the gamut of the major femtocell market communities, from integrators
and test vendors to rural cooperatives.
Though the Forum does not set or write standards per se, it does
attempt to create a consensus among members for common practices.
Enshrining TR-069 may not have been a difficult sell by which to
measure the negotiating powers of the Forum, but the importance of
femtocell management to the overall market is quite high, reflecting
vendor concerns on femtocell installation and operations that could
stall deployment without robust standards. However, it should be noted
that “…To the extent that vendors were already implementing TR-069,
the Forum’s announcement doesn’t actually change market dynamics, nor
does it even compel vendors who aren’t looking at TR-069 to move in
that direction,” according to Peter Jarich, a senior analyst with
Current Analysis, in a recent intelligence report.
TR-069 will help lower capex costs and simplify deployment, as well as
interoperate with third-party femto services. Femto cells can be shut
down centrally via TR-069 if macro-cell network interference becomes a
problem. And because it’s a product of the Broadband Forum, TR-069
commands some market confidence as a proven management solution that
can integrate with a number of existing management solutions from a
fairly wide array of vendors.
However, as Jarich points out, some vendors may choose to support
other femto management protocols in addition to TR-069; despite the
impressive-sounding stat of 30 million installed devices to its
credit, the standard is less than two years old and hasn’t had as much
market success as was hoped for — or even as much as the Forum sometimes
claims.
“More worrying, however, is the absence of any messaging on
how the Forum will work with standards bodies to make TR-069 an actual
standard,” Jarich continues. “When announcing progress with network
integration standards, cooperation with the 3GPP and 3GPP2 was cited.
The absence of any similar details on the device management front
questions whether TR-069 will ever be more than a de facto standard.”
In addition, TR-069 was developed for DSL operators and may lack some
of the necessary functionality (especially in terms of RF interference
and planning) for femto providers, particularly cable operators and
those that have already deployed non-TR-069 solutions.
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