The Femto Forum’s members have agreed to use the Broadband Forum's TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol, a worldwide standard for real-time management of customer premises equipment (CPE), as the basis for the management protocol for femtocells.

Management and provisioning of a large number of femtocells has been a major concern for operators. However, by adopting a familiar standard protocol in TR-069 should bring a measure of comfort as it will let  femtocells be deployed and configured reliably and in high volumes.

Unlike traditional cellular equipment, femtocells will be sold and installed by subscribers, so the provisioning and configuration must be completely automated and managed remotely by the mobile operator. The TR-069 standard allows operators to offer simple installation and provisioning; perform advanced diagnostics and conduct remote firmware and service upgrades with millions of end devices, in an extremely cost-effective manner.

The two organizations plan to continue working together to define extensions to TR-069 and to add additional femtocell capabilities to the standard.