The Small Cell Forum and ETSI’s NFV Industry Specification Group have signed an agreement to collaborate on a new work stream, exploring synergies between ETSI’s NFV programme and Small Cell Forum’s work to determine carrier requirements and recommendations for the virtualisation of small cells.
The agreement was signed by Alan Law, the chair of Small Cell Forum, at the 65th ETSI General Assembly, that took place in Sophia Antipolis, France.
Small Cell Forum launched its virtualisation programme 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 organisations are aligned, opening the door for Small Cell Forum’s recommendations to be included in future ETSI use case definitions.
“ETSI has been a close partner of the Small Cell Forum for a number of years and the work on virtualisation and the ongoing Plugfests is bringing us even closer together,” said Law. “Virtualisation 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.
