Small Cell Forum is developing a series of technical and deployment blueprints that will address an important gap in the mobile networks market. These will provide common reference designs and deployment processes that reduce the time, cost and risk of developing a small cell network. While based on standard specifications, the blueprints will be specific to certain roll-out scenarios that are not currently addressed by the frameworks of other organizations.
In particular, two use cases need to be urgently addressed – private small cell networks for enterprise connectivity and services and cellular vehicle-to-everything (CV2X) for Automotive industry integrated with smart city services. Both these represent significant areas of near-term growth potential in adoption of small cells, but roll-outs may be delayed or diminished without clear blueprints to drive scale and confidence into the market, and make small cells affordable and easily deployable for a wide variety of stakeholders.
SCF believes blueprints are essential to maximize the deployability of small cells in these sectors because:
The SCF Emerging Tech group is lead by representatives from Reliance Jio and Lockheed Martin, and supported by other SCF-member companies. The group is initially focused on the blueprints for 5G private networks initiative. The first phase will focus on enterprise 5G private networks that are deployed in isolation from the public network, with a delivery target of the first half of 2022. This will be followed by a blueprint for private networks that are MNO-supported, with a deadline of Q1 2023. Blueprints for CV2X and, later, for Industry 4.0 use cases, will be developed based on the private networks blueprints. If you would like to get involved in this work and the Emerging Tech group please email [email protected]