The Femto Forum has announced the winners of the Femto Forum Femtocell Industry Awards 2011. The awards recognise outstanding achievement within, and contributions to, the femtocell industry. The awards were presented at a gala dinner at the Femtocells World Summit in London last night.

Winners include NEC, Alcatel-Lucent, NSN, Vodafone and Huawei. According to Femto Forum announcement winners in various categories are as below

1. Individual contribution to Femto Forum activities (judged by Femto Forum group chairs) -
Award Winner: Tom Lismer, Consultant

2. Residential femtocell access point design and technology innovation (vendor)
Award Winner: Picochip - The PC3008 enables the world’s smallest 3G basestation

3. Non-residential (enterprise, public access and other) femtocell access point design and technology innovation (vendor)
Award Winner: Alcatel-Lucent - Metro Cells: Femtocell technology for increased capacity and coverage in urban and rural environments

4. Femtocell network element design and technology innovation (any)
Award Winner: ip.access - OysterCatcher™

5. Femtocell application: new service or technology (vendor or operator)
Award Winner: Alcatel-Lucent - Alcatel-Lucent 9360 Small Cell/Femtocell application API, SDK and SW developers outreach

6. Progress in commercial deployment (vendor or ecosystem)
Award Winner: Huawei - China Unicom’s 3G Inn Wireless Broadband Service by Huawei Technologies

7. Commercial deployment – marketing campaign (operator)
Award Winner: Vodafone - Vodafone Femto Productline – Best value proposition build and multi-market rollout

8. Commercial deployment – technical implementation (operator)
Award Winner: Vodafone - Vodafone Group Best Commercial Deployment Technical Implementation

9. Contribution to femtocell standards (individual or company)
Award Winner: Nokia Siemens Networks - Contribution to 3GPP Releases 10 and 11 – Enhancements to mobility and interference management

10. Enabling technology (components, subsystems, modules etc.)
Award Winner: Texas Instruments

11. Social vision – promoting femtocells for social/ economic/ environmental development
Award Winner: NEC - Outdoor small cells for Rural & Developing Communities to bridge the digital divide

12. Judges’ choice
Award Winner: Rakon - Ongoing enablement of femtocell market through provision of oscillators

13. Chairman's Award
Award Winner: Mehmet Yavuz - Qualcomm

The awards were open to the whole industry and were judged independently of the Femto Forum by a panel of analysts, journalists and industry experts, chaired by Dean Bubley, Founder and Director at Disruptive Analysis.