Women in Wireless Infrastructure: Small Cell Forum CEO Sue Monahan
Sue Monahan is all about the network. She says the network is what she loves best about both her current jobs: She is director of GSMA North America and she has recently added the role of CEO of the Small Cell Forum. When Monahan says she enjoys the networking aspects of her jobs she is of course talking about the physical network, but it’s clear that she also enjoys networking with the carriers.
“Carrier engagement is probably one of the top areas of focus for me,” said Monahan. “Probably my number one focus is to get more carrier engagement into the Small Cell Forum.” Monahan said that carrier input is crucial as the Forum focuses on outdoor small cells. With a limited number of deployments to date, all information that carriers can share about their efforts will be valuable.
The Small Cell Forum has already documented different use cases and business models for urban small cell deployments. Backhaul is of course one of the biggest challenges, and Monahan said that her group’s research to date points to wireless backhaul as a promising solution. “An interesting point is that our business case analysis for urban found that wireless backhaul had a much lower total cost of ownership than fiber.”
This summer, the Small Cell Forum will issue its Release 4 on small cell deployments. Release 1 and 2 were more focused on indoor small cells. Release 3 and 4 are focused on urban small cells. “Unlike the other releases which have had very extensive deployments, urban is very early days, so we don’t have a lot of experience yet,” said Monahan.
“We issued Release 3 at MWC in February and that just laid the foundation for urban small cell deployments, so in Release 4 we will delve into the technical details that will speed deployment,” said Monahan. She is currently in Singapore at Small Cells Asia, working on the content for Release 4. She said Release 4 will include elaborated small cell network architecture documentation and more on regulatory aspects of urban small cells.
“Our documents will try to get as much carrier experience as we can to speed deployment for other carriers,” she said. “The more operators we get, the better the standards, so it is much better to get involved on the front end.” Monahan added that she looks forward to working with Asian carriers next week at operator-only meetings, and that she has worked hard to get in front of executives with authority.
“I am reaching out to the top,” said Monahan. “We need to get the decision makers there. The guys I invited to our meeting last week were CXO levels. A lot of it gets delegated down but you need to have the decision makers there.”
Before she took on the directorship of the GSMA, Monahan held engineering positions at Bellcore (now Telcordia) and at Pacific Bell Mobile (now part of Verizon). She said that in her current work as director of GSMA, the initiative that intrigues her the most is the group’s Connected Living program.
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