SK Telecom on Wednesday said that its data femtocell technology, commercialized for the first time in the world, received an award in the category of Commercial Deployment (Innovation in Commercial Deployment) at this year's Small Cell Industry Awards held in London. 

The Small Cell Industry Awards, the world's most prestigious award in the field of femtocell, recognizes outstanding contributions to the femtocell industry. Small Cell Forum, the organizer of Femtocell Industry Awards, is a not for profit membership organization founded in 2007 to enable and promote small cell technology worldwide. The Small Cell Forum membership has grown to include 63 mobile operators worldwide such as SK Telecom, Vodafone, AT&T and NTT Docomo, as well as around 70 telecommunications equipment manufacturers like Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, Huawei and Cisco.

The award comes as the result of SK Telecom's various achievements in the field of small cell technology including not only Data Femtocell but also Wi-Fi Integrated 2FA Femtocell (commercialized in Apr. 2011) and LTE Femtocell (commercialized in Jun. 2012). SK Telecom won the award together with Contela, a small and medium sized equipment vendor in Korea, and Mindspeed, a U.S. modem chip manufacturer, for the joint development of Data Femtocell technology. 

SK Telecom's Data Femtocell is an ultra mini base station specialized for data offloading and has been commercialized in November 2010 to accommodate data traffic concentrated in small areas.

Being customized for data services, Data Femtocell ensures optimal data service experience for customers and enhances the quality of voice calls by easing the data traffic burden on 3G network.

SK Telecom also enabled Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) feature in femtocells for the first time in the world. CSFB feature supports voice service over LTE when 3G femtocell is installed within the coverage of the LTE network.

Byun Jae Woan, CTO of SK Telecom said, "The award is recognition of SK Telecom's consistent efforts to allow customers to experience a more convenient and flawless wireless data service by developing and applying advanced femtocell technologies. SK Telecom will continue its endeavor to develop and deliver technologies that enhance customer convenience and benefits."