Small Cell Forum
 

Small cells news round-up: February 2016

The dark days of January are over and the mobile industry is in the grip of its annual frenzied build-up to Mobile World Congress at the end of February. Small Cell Forum will be more active than ever, and the Small Cell Zone, in Hall 7, Stand F61 will showcase the brightest innovations in this sector, as well as a hectic program of presentations and meetings.

As small cells move into the mainstream of carrier planning, they will be an inherent part of many other major developments expected at MWC – in areas like HetNet, self-optimizing networks, LTE in unlicensed spectrum, and of course, 5G.

In the news items which grabbed our attention around the turn of the year, small cells are not just found in specific product announcements, but cropping up in broader developments such as IoT trials, and standards work in ETSI and the 3GPP. Other significant developments have also been taking place in recent weeks. The end of 2015 saw the conclusion of the World Radio Conference, with important implications for small cells – in the harmonization of the 3.5 GHz band worldwide, and a study item focused on bands above 24 GHz for 5G.

Unlicensed spectrum is increasingly important in the HetNet too, and the Forum has been working with the Wireless Broadband Alliance to provide a key enabler of this – a specification for a Trusted WLAN interface to connect Wi-Fi access points to 3GPP architectures.

Such developments highlight that small cells will be a critical element of new evolving architectures such as virtualized RAN. These will not only feed into the 5G standards process, but help operators like Verizon and Sprint to accelerate the densification plans which they are kicking off now.

 

News round-up

Joint SCF & WBA taskforce agrees on new architecture for
small cell Wi-Fi integration

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World Radio Conference 2015 – important outcomes for small cells

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US operators gear up for major small cell deployments, lobby for new planning rules

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Verizon shifts from new spectrum to small cells to boost capacity, targets enterprise

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Cable industry may add 5G small cells to homespot strategy

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Small cells key to Airtel's huge Project Leap

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Nokia completes acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent

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Attention shifts to the mobile edge

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Small cells are central to first LSA spectrum trial in France

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Cellwize and CellMining push SON boundaries

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Cisco and three carriers support Kumu's full duplex

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Mobile World Congress

Small Cell Zone @ MWC16

The Small Cell Zone at Mobile World Congress is where the global carriers, innovators, influencers and leaders of the small cell community meet, network and share ideas. Once again taking residence in Hall 7 Stand 7F61, we are hosting a varied speaker program, with leading operators, analysts and vendors sharing their latest developments. As well as all sponsor companies we feature speakers from SoftBank, AT&T, Reliance Jio, Union Wireless and Vodafone. They will be joined by key industry analysts from Mobile Experts, Think Small Cell and Rethink Research.

Find out more about the Small Cell Zone »


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