Vodafone, SK Telecom and Cisco were among the operators and vendors honored for their small cell innovation efforts by The Small Cell Forum, an industry and operator association. Awards were presented at a recent gala in London.
The awards, judged by an independent panel of analysts, journalists and industry experts, were given as follows:
–In residential femtocell access point design and innovation among vendors, Cisco and its Management Heartbeat Server won the category, based on the ability to give operators real-time management data on small cell networks.
–For enterprise and public access small cell vendors, SpiderCloud Wireless took top honors. Its technology has been deployed by Vodafone and makes use of self-optimizing network technology to deploy quickly and at a fraction of the cost of other types of deployments, concluded Caroline Gabrial, research director for Maravedis Rethink and chair of the judges panel.
–Vodafone had several wins, including the small cell service category with its free 3G hotspot service in Greece. The operator’ MetroZone small cell commercial deployments in partnership with Huawei, which allows small cells to be backhaul using TD-LTE wireless connectivity as an alternative to microwave, won for innovation in commercial deployment, and it also won for progress in commercial deployment.
“With 14 commercial rollouts including residential, enterprise and public access use cases, and access support ranging from DSL to satellite backhaul, Vodafone Group has shown the universal appeal of small cells,” said Nick Marshall, principal networks analyst for ABI and lead judge for the progress in commercial deployment category.
–In the category of small cell network element design and technology innovation, SK Telecom’s commercial deployment of LTE femtocells won out. The operators, as well as its vendor partners Contela and Mindspeed, also won the category for innovation in commercial deployment of small cells.
“To label SK Telecom’s LTE public access femtocell service ‘pioneering’ almost seems an understatement,” said Ken Rehbehn, principal analyst for the mobile RAN at Yankee Group and lead judge for the design category. “Not only did its launch last June make it far and away the world’s first LTE small cell deployment, it also incorporates public Wi-Fi, at both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, as well as voice over LTE. It has already been densely deployed in urban areas using the same band as the macro network so also includes cutting edge interference mitigation.”
–AirHop Communications won for its eSON cloud-based management enabling technology, and ip.access and Altobridge won for their satellite-backhauled, solar-powered solution for rural access in the social vision category.
–AT&T was recognized with the judges’ choice award for articulating its vision of the role small cells will play in the future of mobile networks and its ambitious plans to deploy them.
–The Small Cell Forum also issued individual awards to Rupert Baines and Professor Simon Saunders, for their work in promoting the forum’s efforts. Baines led the re-branding of the Femto Forum to become the Small Cell Forum, and Saunders is the forum’s chairman. Nick Johnson and Julius Robson were also recognized for their work in the forum’s release program, roadmap and white papers.
