The Femto Forum has changed its name to Small Cell Forum. What’s in a word, you ask? Quite a lot when you consider what impact femto technology is having on how the mobile network is built.
Femtocells have had a very specific role to play in assisting operators fill holes in their network coverage, and thereby reduce churn. But the capabilities of femtocells are not limited to providing home-zone services for households. The same capabilities – plug and play, self-configuring, self-organising – have a benefit outside the brick walls.
The next generation of mobile networks – LTE – will be constructed with cells of many different sizes, shapes and applications. There will still be large cells supporting hundreds of simulataneous users. But perhaps more importantly, there will be medium-sized “metrocells” providing targeted coverage in high streets, train stations and stadia – they will be like femtocells, differing only that they perhaps use wireless or radio backhaul, open access and have QoS capabilities. And there will be microcells bringing coverage to villages, where people live rather than current macrocells providing coverage of empty fields. Cells for outdoors, cells for indoors. All LTE cells will share an underlying family trait: they have many of the characteristics of the 3G femtocell.
So rather than continuing with a confusing nomenclature, calling them metrocells or metro femto, enterprise cells, ultra femtos or microcells, they will all be members of the small cells family. Peter Yarich, research director with Current Analysis, predicted that small cells will be adopted as a group name, over a year ago, in a blog for Wilson Street.
Analysts Michelle Donnegan at Light Reading and Aditya Kaul at ABI Research, both recognize the need for a name change.
In the Forum’s own words, it will “address all small cells that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence – including what have been dubbed femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. It will also support the crossover between small cells and other relevant technologies including: Wi-Fi, cloud RAN (which connects cellular radio to cloud-based intelligence over fibre), Distributed Antenna Systems, as well as macrocells as part of the new heterogeneous network (hetnet) environment.”
There’s also Wikipedia page explaining the variety of small cells technology, including WiMax, trusted Wi-Fi and DAS.
Here’s a video from Simon Saunders, chairman of the Small Cells Forum, talking about the new, wider remit: