In our latest blog, SCF Chair Alan Law looks forward to an exciting week in Dallas 2 – 5 November with the Small Cells Champions Workshop, announcements about increasing deployment figures at Small Cells Americas and our North American Plenary.

It’s the Small Cells Americas conference and exhibition in Dallas next week and I’m really looking forward to it. Not just for the chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, but because I think we are at a really important moment in the history and development of the small cell and small cell technology.

At the conference I will present a new report from Small Cell Forum that we are calling ‘Crossing the Chasm’. It is really a ‘state of the nation’ report on our industry as well as something of a roadmap that sets out our direction of travel. In that regard it also helps identify those challenges and issues that we need to target and resolve as the mobile market keeps on growing and growing.

More importantly, to me, the report makes it clear that it will be small cells that drive the next phase of growth for our industry. We termed the report Crossing the Chasm because we are firmly in a transitional phase for the small cell industry. We’ll reveal the numbers that show the market is now actually maturing in the residential and SOHO sectors – we have more than 11 million cells deployed and live in that sector. But in the Enterprise space, we are just taking off, and are facing a period of sustained growth – as much as tenfold over the next five years.

And these Enterprise cells are about much more than simply coverage and capacity. They will drive new services and enable operators to ‘commercialize the mobile edge’.

In September in Rome, we held what we termed a Champions Day event, in which we outlined the six work programs that we believe will help us the drive the industry forward and address the challenges facing the mobile operator community. The Crossing the Chasm report – which draws together three separate and independent pieces of research – confirms without doubt that we are on the right track.

At Small Cells Americas, we will hold a Champions Day Workshop on the Monday for two hours from 16.30 and I urge you, if you are in Dallas, to take the time to attend the session and hear directly from the operators who are leading the six work programs, as well as from their vendor community partners.  These are the initiatives that will collectively drive industry progress – and that surely speaks directly to the heart of the mission for Small Cell Forum

I’d also like to remind you that our North American Plenary, which will be held in Dallas alongside the exhibition, is our last meeting before MWC 16 in Barcelona next year.   The meetings and workshops in Dallas will determine the next phase of our Release program and represent your chance to be “in the room” when the decisions are taken that help shape our industry and the future of all our businesses.  You can register for both the Plenary and the Champions Day Workshop here.

I look forward to seeing you next week. It is set to be an interesting, informative, and inspiring week.