Small Cell Forum is developing a series of technical and deployment blueprints that will address an important gap in the mobile networks market. These will provide common reference designs and deployment processes that reduce the time, cost and risk of developing a small cell network. While based on standard specifications, the blueprints will be specific to certain roll-out scenarios that are not currently addressed by the frameworks of other organizations.

In particular, two use cases need to be urgently addressed – private small cell networks for enterprise connectivity and services and cellular vehicle-to-everything (CV2X) for Automotive industry integrated with smart city services. Both these represent significant areas of near-term growth potential in adoption of small cells, but roll-outs may be delayed or diminished without clear blueprints to drive scale and confidence into the market, and make small cells affordable and easily deployable for a wide variety of stakeholders.

SCF believes blueprints are essential to maximize the deployability of small cells in these sectors because:

• Blueprints provide common reference designs and deployment guidelines that apply to a specific use case (e.g. CV2X, private cellular) and to specific service offerings. SCF is also planning to set up a framework for badging and certification.
• Providers of components, modules, software and cloud native platforms can design to these specs and be certified as compliant and interoperable
• Because they are use case-specific, blueprints enable deployers to be confident that compliant solutions will be interoperable and deployable for their own business
• Advantages for deployers include reduced cost, time for integration, and reduced risk
• Advantages for vendors include lower barriers and high confidence to deployment, and the likelihood of accelerated uptake by customers.