11th February 2009
SFR Business Team, ip.access and SPIE bring picocells to France
New collaboration delivers turnkey indoor coverage for enterprise mobile subscribers
Cambridge, 11 February 2009 – ip.access (www.ipaccess.com), the multi-award winning developer of picocell and femtocell solutions to boost mobile phone coverage indoors, together with SFR Business Team, the leading alternative French operator on the business market, and SPIE today announced that they are working together to bring the benefits of ip.access picocells to the French mobile market.
Working with SFR Business Team, SPIE has developed the capability to provide a fully managed service for ip.access nanoBTS picocells in France.This service includes the initial project and network design and planning, network integration, site surveys and deployment of the picocells on enterprise user premises, as well as the day-to-day operations and network management functions. This new collaboration builds on SPIE’s track record of network deployment and operation for all the major network operators inFrance.
SFR Business Team uses ip.access nanoBTS picocells as the basis for its SFR Office Extend offer. “SFR Office Extend is greatly appreciated by our enterprise customers, who gain excellent coverage throughout their premises. This is a perfect complement to our SFR One Office service range”, said Pierre-Yves Rallet, Marketing Director at SFR Business Team.
Current SFR One Office Extend customers, such as Isobox and Piscines Groupe GA, enjoy comfortable network access for their employees, while also benefiting from very competitive prices. The Group provides all its customers with its top-flight network quality, ranked N° 1 in 2008 (by Arcep).
SFR Business Team has a strong position on the market, with 100 nanoBTS to be deployed as of late-March 2009. The solution’s attractiveness will mean significant growth potential.
Picocells provide an excellent way for mobile operators to deliver a high-quality differentiated service to their business customers, by offering excellent in-building voice quality and high speed EDGE data rates for business-critical devices such as Blackberries® and smart phones. The ip.access nanoGSM solution can reduce project implementation costs and lead time by a factor of 2, compared with traditional indoor coverage solutions, and makes indoor coverage cost-effective for small and medium enterprises starting at 10 employees or VIPs.
"ip.access is the pioneer and leading vendor of IP-based picocells that deliver high quality indoor mobile coverage and capacity, where businesses need it most. Working with them to deliver a fully packaged turnkey solution to demanding operator customers is a perfect complement to our broad range of deployment services for mobile operators” said Hervé SMADJA, Director of DML –Telecom Deployment Department of SPIE. Commenting on the collaboration, Chris Rees Senior VP Sales and Marketing, ip.access said “the experience and capabilities of SPIE are accelerating the deployments of the ip.access picocell solution into businesses in France”
About SPIE
As a specialist in electrical, mechanical and HVAC engineering, energy, communications and infrastructure, SPIE enhances the world around us and contributes to its development by helping local and regional authorities and companies design, build, operate and maintain their facilities.
With more than 27,000 employees working from nearly 400 locations in 28 countries, SPIE provides advanced technical services and solutions to meet the current and future challenges of both local and international customers.
In 2007, SPIE achieved sales of €3.46 billion and generated a trading profit of €137.5 million.
About SFR Business Team
Following the merger between SFR and Neuf Cegetel, SFR Business Team is now the largest alternative fixed and mobile operator on the businesses French market.
With its high speed mobile and fixed end-to-end network infrastructures, SFR Business Team has more than 120,000 small and large business customers, representing about 35% of mobile lines and 40% of corporate data/IP networks.
Based on new technologies (VoIP, M2M, 3G+ mobile data) and convergence and building from the expertise of its 2,000 dedicated employees (in technical, marketing, sales, and customer service) and 300 “solutions” partners, SFR Business Team is positioned as the model operator, capable of releasing the full potential of businesses, from small businesses to multinational corporations, by offering them the most appropriate and scalable telecom solutions (telephony, data, Internet, Machine-to-Machine) for their business.
SFR Business Team benefits from international coverage through its partnership with Vodafone.
SFR Business Team, a brand of SFR, relies on its subsidiary Neuf Cegetel to offer fixed solutions. (www.sfrbusinessteam.fr),
About ip.access
Based in Cambridge, UK, ip.access ltd (www.ipaccess.com) is a leading manufacturer of cost-effective picocell and femtocell infrastructure solutions for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3G. These solutions bring IP and cellular technologies together to drive down costs and increase coverage and capacity of mobile networks.
ABI Research ranks ip.access as the world’s number 1 picocell vendor; its nanoGSM® and nano3G™ picocell solutions provide 2G and 3G coverage and capacity for offices, shops and (using satellite backhaul) passenger aircraft, ships and remote rural areas. nanoGSM is the world’s most deployed picocell, with live installations in more than 50 networks around the world and growing.
ip.access is also the company behind the multi-award winning Oyster 3G™ femtocell technology, which dramatically improves the user experience for 3G services at home. Oyster 3G is the core femtocell technology in AT&T’s 3G MicroCell.
ip.access counts Scottish Equity Partners, Rothschild Gestion, Intel Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, ADC, Cisco, Qualcomm and Motorola Ventures among its shareholders.
Distributed on behalf of ip.access by NeonDrum
Nicky Davis
Tel: +44 7747017654
nicky@neondrum.com
http://www.neondrum.com