Three questions with…JMA Wireless

Company name:

JMA Wireless

Company overview:

JMA Wireless (JMA) is an American company accelerating revolutionary changes in mobile connectivity with cutting-edge products that enable faster, more reliable, and more secure networks for consumers and businesses. JMA delivers software-driven, carrier-grade solutions designed specifically for in-building and outdoor use, offering superior performance, coverage, and stability for the most advanced and highly dense networks worldwide.

Your name and title:

Gilberto Brizzi – VP Product Line Management – RAN

Q1. Your company is a member of Small Cell Forum, so what is your view on the future of small cells as 5G comes in?

Delivering high performance indoor wireless systems to satisfy more and more data-hungry users requires perfect coverage and densification. Connecting fans in the stadium or delivering a robust connectivity to employees will be satisfied by small cell networks, a solution proven to lower the cost of operations while ensuring lifetime quality levels in equipment and unrivalled performance for coverage and high-speed mobile data. Small cell network, 100% software based, supporting multi-operator and multi-band perfectly match the requirements of Neutral Hosts for Hosted Open RAN. Future proof DAS platforms, paired with virtualized small cell can be used to optimize spectrum efficiency empowering venue owners to maximum performance, supporting multiple operators, with the flexibility to adapt coverage and capacity in any venue on an event-by-event basis.

Q2. How do you see the industry changing at the moment and what can the Forum do to address/improve/or enhance these changes?

Overall seamless connectivity with very high data throughput is today the major technology trend. The wireless industry needs to support this challenging requirement especially for indoor venues where most of the data is exchanged. Wireless connectivity is going to be more and more delivered by multi-operator and multi-band open systems.

5G, with its network slicing and independent control and user plane functions, is enabling private massive industrial IoT applications that will benefit from ultra-low latency and incredibly high bandwidth connections supporting artificial intelligence-driven applications serving an exploding number of sensors and endpoints. Local processing allows machine learning algorithms to be applied on massive amounts of data while assuring the security and privacy of the enterprise campus.

Open RAN is the other pillar of wireless industry change. Small Cell Forum is called to study and guide the emerging wireless industry changes showing agnostic but clear directions to not spread efforts and solutions.

Q3. In relation to your business, what are some the key technologies /or polices that are driving the industry (or parts of the industry) forward at the moment, and how can we progress further and faster?

Open RAN is today the most important technology trend. It aims to create RAN interfaces that support interoperation between vendors’ equipment, offering network flexibility at a lower cost. The main purpose of Open RAN is to have an interoperability standard for RAN elements including white box hardware and software from different vendors. Network operators that opt for RAN elements with standard interfaces can avoid being stuck with one vendor’s proprietary hardware and software. JMA Wireless has fully embraced this trend. Similarly, the Small Cell Forum is working on Open interfaces and Neutral Host requirements proposing the Hosted Open RAN framework. Multi-operator and multi-band small cell are the future of shared and neutral host networks. JMA Wireless is there to support this development.