Words from the chair
by Simon Saunders, Chair, Femto Forum
Welcome to this first Femto Forum newsletter, provided to members and non-members alike, written to keep you up-to-date with developments in the fast-changing world of femtocells. 

It's been a very busy time for the Femto Forum, with many new members joining us, including well over 40 of the world's largest operators and vendors alongside the innovators who have brought femtocells to the industry's attention . Our working groups are working hard on the key issues needed to bring femtocells to market rapidly and efficiently - Telefonica-O2's Chris Fenton describes WG3's work on Network & Interoperability below. We've also seen the world's first commercial femtocell deployment, showing that existing standards and handsets give us a fantastic base to work from. 

As we anticipate our 3rd plenary meeting in Dallas we hope this newsletter and our new website will act as your key reference source to get involved with the Forum and the newly-emerging Femto market.

Mandate for Network & Interoperability working group
by Chris Fenton, Telefonica-O2
Our aim with WG3 is to resolve different requirements and find solutions for features and capabilities relating to the network aspects of Femto. This consists of capabilities in the Femto node, right through to the interface that integrates into the core network.

The group is well represented from both vendor and operator sides of the industry and meetings to date have provided an open forum with good discussion and sharing of ideas. 

The group's mandate is as follows:

1)     Industry situation
Discuss industry and market activities for Femto: intelligence and vendor/operator actions/changes.  Be informed and share between members.

2)     Requirements
Gather requirements of areas that need definition and refer these to WG1 as feedback on aspects that effect functionality, user experience and cost.  Use these areas to help define both the separation of responsibilities and the key liaison topics between WG2 and WG3

3)     Current architecture
Review architectural options and develop target architecture, invite proposals for any technology and assess tools and planning/deployment issues.

4)     Target Architecture
Get basic requirements/capabilities/proposals in place so that initial outline contributions can be offered in Jan 08 to standards bodies.  The group has produced requirements and basic reference architectures to date and has started to liaise across the industry, in particular looking to the DSL Forum for home node management and configuration.

The Dallas meeting looks to complete our initial deliberations  and establish a basis on which to build.