The Small Cell Forum has made public its “release two” for technical documents, market drivers and advice on deployment of small cell networks for the enterprise.
Gordon Mansfield, chairman of the forum, said that the first release focusing on residential small cells has been downloaded more than 30,000 times since its debut last spring as companies and individuals seek to learn more about best practices and deployment pointers for small cell technology.
“We had high expectations for the release program, but the material that the forum and the ecosystem has developed is really exceeding our expectations,” Mansfield said.
The second release explores small cells for enterprise and includes 25 new and updated documents that cover technical aspects of small cell deployment such as enterprise reference architecture, as well the business case for small cells. Self-organizing networks and small cells, co-deployment with Wi-Fi, IT integration, backhaul and security are among the other topics in the release.
“The intent behind the release program is to be an all-you-need guide that’s for the operators and vendors alike – but in the enterprise case, it also applies to enterprises themselves,” Mansfield said. He added that the documents on market drivers and the business case for small cells “show the benefits not just to the operator, but to the enterprises themselves.”
Mansfield suggested that readers start with the enterprise overview to get a good sense of the information contained in the release and which papers hold the additional details that are of interest.
Mansfield, who gave a keynote at the Small Cell Americas conference this week, said that there are more then 56 operators investing in small cells for use in residential, enterprise and public applications. More than 44 of those, he said, are deploying residential femtocells; 26 are deploying enterprise small cells and 17 are working on urban, public small cells for increased network capacity. As of October, he said, more than 7.2 million residential small cells have been deployed, along with about 168,000 indoor small cells and 2,700 outdoor small cells – the last, he said, indicative of trial activity and expected to increase.
“From a high-level perspective, it’s pretty clear that residential dominates the market today,” Mansfield said. “But the non-residential, while it’s just in its infancy, you start to see uptake in 2015-2016 and you start getting multi-million numbers in 2017-2018. It really ramps.”
Urban small cells are going to be the focus of the Small Cell Forum’s next release, he added, which is being compiled now with foundations expected to be complete around the time of the next Mobile World Congress and a more detailed document to be released in June.
