Huawei and Reliance Jio join board

New regional operator groups created for Asia and North America

London 20 October 2015: Small Cell Forum today confirmed two new appointments to its Board and new members to strengthen and expand its global presence and influence. New to the Board will be senior representatives of Asian companies Huawei – one of the world’s largest telecoms infrastructure providers – and leading Indian operator Reliance Jio.

Announcing the move, Small Cell Forum Chairman Alan Law said: “Small cell technology will play a key part in the densification of mobile networks as the industry responds to the challenge of the need for ever greater capacity and connectivity.

“Nowhere is that challenge more keenly felt today than it is in Asia,” he added, “and bringing onto our Board two local experts who can provide real insight and feedback will enable the Forum to continue to drive the progress of the small cell industry globally.”

Peter Zhou, President of Huawei Small Cell product line said: “Small Cell Forum plays a very important role in the development of the Small Cell industry, we are pleased to join the board.  As an early innovator, Huawei’s indoor digital Small Cell System LampSite has been widely adopted all over the world to help operators to build an excellent mobile broadband network. We hope to contribute more to the industry and together make small cell a bigger business for the whole value chain.”

At the same time, the Forum announced it would be creating two new regional operator groups to further pool local knowledge and become a central point to improve understanding of regional requirements for small cell and HetNet technology.

The new Asia group will be led by operators China Unicom and Reliance Jio; while the North American group will be led by AT&T and Sprint.

David Orloff, Director of Small Cells Platform for AT&T will co-chair the North American group: “North America continues to be extremely diverse with wireless technology and spectrum implementations. There is great opportunity for the operators and vendors here to set small cell direction that drives the industry through 5G implementation. I am excited to support the North American region.”

Alan Law added: “It is apparent that different regions have different priorities in terms of small cell development and deployment. We believe that by harnessing the power of our operators in regional groups we can better incorporate real-world requirements into our development work plans and smooth the introduction of small cell technology across the globe.”

Small Cell Forum continues to attract new members from every part of the ecosystem, with operators comprising over 40% of new recruits in the last year. Newcomers include Accelleran, Aricent, ASCOS, Cellos Software, ClearSky, M1, MAX4G, Parallel Wireless, Reliance Jio, Talk-Talk, Turkcell, Union Wireless, Yoctocomm.

The new Board and regional chair appointments are:

• Peter Zhou, President, Small Cell Product Line at Huawei joins the main Board
• Tareq Amin, Senior Vice President Wireless, Reliance Jio Infocomm, joins the main Board.
• Gen Cao, Senior Engineer, China Unicom will co-chair the Asia Regional Operator Group with Satish Jamadagni, Assistant Vice President, of Reliance Jio.
• David Orloff, Director Small Cells Platform, AT&T will co-chair the North America Group with Mark Lipford, Director of Global Standards & Ecosystem Development at Sprint.