Provides technical, commercial and practical deployment guide. Supports major acceleration of Enterprise small cell market. Advances use of multi-operator small cells and license-free spectrum.
London and Barcelona, 23 February, 2016: Small Cell Forum today published a comprehensive toolkit for the Enterprise small cell market. Release Six: Smart Enterprise provides technical, commercial and practical guidance, tools, and data for operators, vendors and businesses looking at the small cell market.
With independent research showing that 60 per cent of businesses expect to have deployed small cell technology by the end of next year, and Enterprise small cell shipments doubling in 2015 and forecast to grow almost four-fold this year; Small Cell Forum has acted quickly to deliver a comprehensive guide to serving the Enterprise market and delivering new solutions and services.
Release Six: Smart Enterprise features a wide range of live case studies showing how Enterprise small cells are being used today as well as detailing the operator and Enterprise business case for their deployment.
“This Enterprise-focused Release delivers across on the board on the six key areas identified by our operator members as crucial to the development of the small cells market,” said Small Cell Forum Chair, Alan Law. “It majors on the needs of the fast-growing Enterprise sector, but also looks to the future by taking us forward on the development of multi-operator small cells, the use of License-exempt spectrum, on network virtualization, and capacity planning in a HetNet environment.”
Release Six: Smart Enterprise includes a number of documents and reports devoted to the Enterprise market:
- Independent research looking at business attitudes and needs for small cells
- A growing library of worldwide operator deployment case studies
- A guide to Enterprise small cell deployment made simple
- IT considerations in Enterprise small cell deployments
- Enterprise small cell architecture planning
- The demand for Enterprise small cells by vertical market sector
- Guidance on small cell APIs for Enterprise-app developers
The research contained in Release Six also reveals that multi-operator small cells are seen as key within the Enterprise market – especially in retail outlets or within corporations operating a BYOD policy – and that businesses are also looking to augment rather than replace Wi-Fi connections. Both of these areas are addressed within the publication.
The Forum’s multi-operator small cells working group provides detailed information on the the market drivers for multi-operator, neutral host small cells, and also looks at the regulatory market challenges. Meanwhile the working group looking at the use of License-exempt spectrum has produced a report on the Future of Voice that discusses the technology merits of small cell voice in a HetNet world. This group has also worked on the integrated architecture requirement for a trusted Enterprise Wireless LAN featuring licensed and unlicensed spectrum.
Looking further forward, Release Six: Smart Enterprise also considers capacity planning for HetNets, the business opportunities for small cells in M2M and IoT, and use cases for small cells in virtualized networks.
“The Forum’s Release Program has proven to be incredibly popular with operators, small cell vendors and the wider mobile community,” said Law. “Since we launched the programme in 2013 we have had 132,000 downloads and the guidance, data, business and technical support they contain continue to fuel the growth and expansion of the market.”
You can download Small Cell Forum Release 6: Smart Enterprise at www.scf.io
About Small Cell Forum
Small Cell Forum works to drive the wide-scale adoption of small cells and accelerate the delivery of integrated HetNets. We are not a standards organization but partner with organizations that inform and determine standards development. We are a carrier-led organization. This means our operator members establish requirements that drive the activities and outputs of our technical groups.
Today our members are driving solutions that include small cell/Wi-Fi integration, SON evolution, virtualization of the small cell layer, driving mass adoption via multi-operator neutral host, ensuring a common approach to service APIs to drive commercialisation and the integration of small cells into 5G standards evolution.
The SCF board includes Airspan, AT&T, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, ip.access, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Reliance Jio, Softbank, Spidercloud, Sprint and Vodafone.
Editorial Contact:
Small Cell Forum: Kevin Taylor
Mail: kevin(dot)taylor(at)robertsontaylorpr(dot)com.
Mob: +447 850 858 291