Our working groups
We have created six working groups to address the key issues affecting the effective development of the small cell industry - Marketing and Promotion; Radio and Physical Layer; Network, Regulatory, Services, and Interoperability.
The aim of the groups is to ensure the rapid and effective deployment of small cells to support a wide variety of customer needs and operator business models.
- The marketing & promotion group is looking at how the industry should best position femtocells within the industry and to the wider public, build usage cases, agree common terminology and manage any potential concerns.
- The radio & physical layer group is developing standardised RF interfaces, clarifying the various capability classes of femtocell and examining interactions with outdoor cells.
- The network group is promoting standardised requirements, architectures and interfaces for integrating femtocells into the network core.
- The regulatory group identifies regulatory benefits and potential issues pertaining to public policy in various strategic markets around the world and works with regulators to ensure a benign environment for rapid and efficient femtocell deployment.
- The services group investigates the possibilities for small cells to introduce innovative new services for consumers which take advantage of the ‘presence’ capabilities of small cells, and easily connect mobile phone users to the home network and the web. The group aims to develop consensus with the industry around common approaches, such as standard APIs, to ensure that services will work across all equipment.
- The interoperability group provides clarity on how, where and when interoperability testing will take place to ensure that deployments function effectively and in accordance with the standards.
We also have four special interest groups that interact with all the main working groups and focus on issues associated with backhaul, LTE, rural deployment and 3GPP2 standards development.
