Working group to drive consensus & create best practice for the deployment of scalable small cell networks

Small Cell World Summit, London – 4th June 2013 – The Small Cell Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports small cell deployment worldwide, today announced the formation of a special interest group to drive consensus and create best practice for building and maintaining scalable small cells networks.

The Deployment SIG will work in close conjunction with other Forum working and special interest groups in particular those relating to Networks, Rural, Regulatory and Backhaul. It will produce details of best practice, whitepapers and presentations which will then be shared amongst the Forum’s membership and available publicly through the Forum’s Release Programme. The new group will be specifically focused on four areas:

• Regulatory – relating to site acquisition, zoning, local legislation, city council rules and public liaisons.
• Business models – considering areas such as neutral/wholesale hosting, leased capacity and shared networks.
• Build – looking at RF & backhaul planning, installation, integration, power, physical, size/loading, safety and security.
• Operational – including maintenance, accessibility, SON impact, service level agreements, key performance indicators and capacity provisioning.

“As small cell deployments of all flavours continue to gain momentum around the globe there is a huge value to be had from sharing operator experiences of deploying and maintaining these networks with the wider ecosystem,” Graham Wright, CEO of the Small Cell Forum. “The creation of this group provides a single point of focus to work closely with operators to share best practice and reduce deployment challenge.”

“The considerations around the deployment of small cells are some of the most important affecting the industry. There has been considerable demand – both internally and from other trade associations – keen for the Forum to lead debate in this area. The newly formed SIG’s early priorities include capturing industry best practice in enterprise deployments for Release Two later this year,” Wright added.

About the Small Cell Forum
The Small Cell Forum (www.smallcellforum.org), supports the wide-scale adoption of small cells. Small cells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence. They provide improved cellular coverage, capacity and applications for homes and enterprises as well as metropolitan and rural public spaces. They include technologies variously described as femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. The Forum has in excess of 140 members including 68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers – 46 per cent of the global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.