One of the most amazing things about Instagram, the photo and video sharing social networking site, is the strength of filters you can use to enhance the vibrancy of an everyday image. So situations that are normal instantly appear brighter, bolder and more brilliant. It was like that with the Small Cell Forum stand at Mobile World Congress this year.
It’s always an extremely busy and exciting event, but everything appeared more so this year. Our two storey stand – which allowed supporting members to host meetings – quite literally raised our normal position in Hall 7. Our speaker program was enriched with operators, vendors and industry evangelists who shared examples of exciting innovations that pushed the boundaries of small cell usage. And Release Five, which concentrated on Rural & Remote deployment of small cells was extremely warmly received, creating headlines on the potential $163 billion market opening up to operators.
A key highlight for me was to see Small Cell Forum members work together to publicize case histories that demonstrate the way small cells can be used to benefit mobile reach in a host of environments. In addition to fantastic presentations from China Mobile, TalkTalk, Vodafone and BMW group we had a series of joint presentations from vendor members.
Benoit Fleury of iBwave gave a presentation indoor small cell planning and was joined by Small Cell Forum board member Art King of SpiderCloud Wireless to demonstrate the impact of this planning in streamlining the survey and design of a warehouse installation. We also saw AmDocs and ip.access present together on the automation processes they have use to accelerate small cell roll out.
These presentations, which will shortly be available on smallcellforum.org demonstrate what is at the heart of Small Cell Forum. There is a sense of mission between member companies that cooperation and hard work will help to get the message out there that small cells can enhance the mobile user experience and improve profitability for mobile operators.
If you’d like to be part of Small Cell Forum and work with us to advance the deployment of small cells, please get in touch. Maybe we’ll see you presenting your case study on the Small Cell Forum stand next year at MWC 2016.
Sue Monahan
CEO Small Cell Forum