A new Release programme from the Small Cell Forum will help network operators launch home, enterprise, metro, and rural small cells.

Release One covers the home, providing “all you need to know” to deploy residential femtocells. It includes business cases, references to key standards, specifications for RFPs and best practices from operators already using femtocells. In preparation for future Releases, there are also white papers on rural small cells and on backhaul use cases and solutions.



SCF Press ReleaseIn their press release, published on the 26th February - during the Mobile World Congress - the Forum looks forward to the next stage:

"Having already brought together the operator community to agree the key requirements for residential small cells, the Forum is now developing the key requirements for future public access vendor equipment.

This includes enhancements to the Iuh small cell standard for public access, fully open X2 interoperability for LTE products and enhancements to provisioning that support multi-technology (3G, LTE & Wi-Fi) small cells.

These requirements will drive the Forum’s work to facilitate future public access deployments which will form a key focus of future Releases."

On seeing the announcement, Adrian Scrase, Head of the the 3GPP Mobile Competence Centre & ETSI CTO said:

“This programme enhances the role of the Forum as a key Market Representation Partner in 3GPP, one that effectively brings the requirements of its members in to the standardization environment. 2013 is the year of Small Cells and 3GPP looks forward to enhanced cooperation as our specifications take their place in the equipment profiles that are at the heart of the Small Cell Forum Release Programme.”

Release One is available ] from the Small Cell Forum Release site – www.scf.io/