The Small Cell Forum plenary in Milan is an important event for the Forum and provides us with the opportunity to capitalize on the work we have completed so far and accelerate the progress Release Five: Rural & Remote. With all working groups well attended in Milan, we will be able to complete all the documents necessary to launch it at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March 2015.

Release Five will take the learning and expertise that has brought small cells to homes, businesses and city centers, and apply it to isolated areas where mobile coverage can be patchy or non-existent. Today’s mobile end users want to be able to log onto apps and services anywhere, anytime, whether at home or on a cruise for vacation. Businesses operating in remote areas want to be able to use existing devices to monitor equipment and contact staff. We know there is an enormous amount of knowledge and deployment experience within the forum – let’s use our time in Milan to focus that expertise to address this issue that affects many individuals and businesses.

Furthermore, gathering in Milan will enable us spend more time working on our approach to Virtualization. This work will help ensure that in dense HetNets, small cells are fully interworking with other platforms to create the broadest pool of capacity and most efficient use of shared resources. This work stream will consider the impact of Virtualization on everything from network architecture to the business case. We are inviting Forum members and the wider industry to get behind this initiative and help shape the future of mobile networks through our Release work. In particular, we are seeking operators’ views on the requirements associated with the Virtualization work stream.

We’ll be sharing plenary registration and hotel accommodation details with you next week. I look forward to seeing you Milan!