Femto Forum, an independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment and the Next Generation of Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance today announced that they will join forces to work on how femtocells can benefit the next-generation mobile broadband networks such as WiMAX and LTE.

The two bodies will work together to ensure that femtocells can be incorporated into next generation mobile networks from the very beginning of its deployment rather than integrating the technology afterwards.

"We want femtocells to be ready from day one, whenever it may be," said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum.

Some of NGMN partners include AT&T (US), China Mobile, France Telecom, LG Telecom (Korea), NTT DoCoMo, Reliance Communications (India), SK Telecom (Korea), Sprint Nextel (US), Telstra (Aus), Telenor ASA (Norway) and Vodafone (UK).

Femtocells are small base stations that can be used in buildings or homes, utilizing a broadband network to improve indoor mobile phone coverage.