Telecom Italia announced “the industry’s first standards-based software development kit” for the creation of femtocell apps, working in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent and Accenture. The company said that this provides the option to not only use femtocells as a tool to extend network coverage and capacity, “but also to offer revenue generating femtocell-zone applications.” Accenture has developed the SDK for Android mobile phones, for PCs using Java 2 Platform Standard Edition, and for application servers using the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition.

The technology is based on API specifications created by the Femto Forum, and Telecom Italia said the SDK has “already been used in developing a number of practical applications.” The operator suggested applications such as location-based SMS send, to alert a parent when a child arrives home; presence-enabled “etourism” apps to provide content to visitors to specific sites; and location-based promotional offers for retailers. It said that “standard femtocell SDK and APIs could be provided to third-party software and application developers, opening up an opportunity to bring a whole new range of applications to a rapidly growing user base.”

Alcatel-Lucent has provided femtocell technology, with Accenture working on development of the SDK.