Small Cells World Summit 2012
The Small Cells World Summit closed today and the big news was the publication of the 2012 Small Cell Forum Industry Awards.
Day 3 (June 28, 2012)
The Small Cell Forum made awards in 12 categories and the awards recognize outstanding achievement and contributions to the small cell industry. A complete list of the awards can be found in the Small Cell Forum’s press release . Here are some of the awards which caught our attention.
Ubiquisys and Intel won the awards for Non-residential design and technology innovation thanks to their Smart Cell devices. This is a sophisticated approach to small cell architecture and leverages the processing power and storage capabilities of “The Cloud” at the network edge – a concept Ubiquisys calls “Smart Cells.”
Nokia Siemens Networks won the award for Small cell network element design and technology innovation with their Flexi Zone. We believe Nokia Siemens Networks’ Flexi Zone is an ambitious and groundbreaking solution for the densification of macro networks, thanks to its ability to adapt to changing data traffic patterns in real time, mitigate interference and its simplicity of installation.
Alcatel-Lucent won the award for Innovation in commercial deployment thanks to their demonstration of the first live, small cell LTE HetNet on a commercial network. This impressive demonstration was carried out at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Alcatel-Lucent’s partner, Telefnica, activated a demonstration of what it calls the world's "smartest" 4G network using Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio small cells. Telefnica deployed 11 lightRadio metrocells in the city and this small cell pilot marked Telefnica's first step toward an LTE HetNet.
Also in the Innovation in commercial deployment category, the Small Cell Forum made an award to SK Telecom, Contela and Mindspeed for the world’s first data only femtocell service. SK Telecom has deployed femtocells outdoors in public hotspots to provide additional capacity where it is needed. Korea is probably one of the most advanced countries for small cells with all 3 service providers aggressively building out small cell networks and we expect this equipment will be widely deployed.
Also in the Enabling technology category, the Small Cell Forum made an award to Radisys for their Trillium eNodeB software which helps manufacturers and operators speed up time to market for small cells by simplifying development and integration. The Trillium eNodeB has been chosen by a who’s who of silicon manufacturers including Intel, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Cavium, Mindspeed DesignArt and Octasic, according to the company.
