Agreement signed at 65th ETSI General Assembly to kick start virtualization collaboration
London, UK, 23 March 2015. Small Cell Forum and ETSI’s NFV Industry Specification Group have signed an agreement to collaborate on a work stream that explores synergies between ETSI’s NFV program and Small Cell Forum’s work to determine carrier requirements and recommendations for the virtualization of small cells.
The agreement was signed by Alan Law, Chair of Small Cell Forum, at the 65th ETSI General Assembly, that took place this week in Sophia Antipolis, France.
Small Cell Forum launched its virtualization program at Small Cells World Summit 2014, an initiative in line with ETSI NFV Use Case #6. The collaboration between Small Cell Forum and ETSI ensures that the objectives of both organizations are aligned, opening the door for Small Cell Forum’s recommendations to be included in future ETSI use case definitions.
An overview of Small Cell Forum’s work to date on virtualization can be found here.
“ETSI has been a close partner of the Small Cell Forum for a number of years and the work on virtualization and the ongoing Plugfests is bringing us even closer together,” said Alan Law, Chair of Small Cell Forum. “Virtualization of the small cell layer and the radio network can open up a wide range of use cases and opportunities, so it’s important that we fully understand each of these. The work with ETSI enables us to align our work streams, providing input and conclusions that will help shape future use case definitions.”
Accelerating the deployment of small cells requires both good quality standards and equipment that conforms to them. Small Cell Forum and ETSI have been working together since 2010, conducting Plugfests to accelerate the deployment of small cells through interoperability testing. To date five events have taken place where the interoperability of 3G and LTE networks has been tested, the last one in June 2014 where multi-vendor SON in heterogeneous networks was tested. A remote Plugfest is planned for April, with the next face-to-face event scheduled for end of 2015.
About the Small Cell Forum (SCF)
Small Cell Forum works to accelerate small cell adoption to change the shape of mobile networks and maximize the potential of mobile services.
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.
Our track record speaks for itself: we have driven the standardization of key elements of small cell technology including Iuh, FAPI/SCAPI, SON, and the small cell services API.
At the time of writing, Small Cell Forum has almost 150 members, including 68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers – 46 per cent of the global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.
Small Cell Forum Release Program
The Small Cell Forum Release Program has now established business cases and market drivers for all the main use cases, clarifying market needs and addressing barriers to deployment for residential, enterprise and urban small cells.
Small Cell Forum Release website can be found here: www.scf.io
About ETSI
ETSI produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, aeronautical, broadcast and internet technologies and is officially recognized by the European Union as a European Standards Organization. ETSI is an independent, not-for-profit association whose more than 800 member companies and organizations, drawn from 64 countries across five continents worldwide, determine its work programme and participate directly in its work.
For more information please visit: www.etsi.org.
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