The Small Cell Forum is an organization that supports the wide scale adoption of small cells. Its mission is to accelerate small cell adoption to change the shape of mobile networks and maximize the potential of the mobile Internet.

Gordon Mansfield is the chairman of the Small Cell Forum. He recently said, “Carriers are moving beyond trials to deployments with public access use cases--we see examples from around the world. I can’t be specific yet about some of the types of areas for AT&T (News - Alert) deployments of small cells, but hopefully we’ll talk about that in the near future. Generally all of our use cases have been vetted in various trials and pilots. We have a couple outdoor deployments up and running and are evolving the use cases.”

So, what are small cells? They are low-powered radio access nodes that operate in licensed and unlicensed spectrum. The Small Cell Forum deals with the licensed spectrum. Small cells have a range of about 30 feet to a little over a mile. This is compared to a mobile macrocell which might have a range of close to ten miles.

With mobile operators struggling to support the growth in mobile data traffic, a lot of them are using mobile data offloading as a more efficient use of radio spectrum. Small cells are a vital element to 3G data off-loading and many mobile network operators see small cells as vital to managing the LTE (News - Alert) advanced spectrum more efficiently compared to using just macrocells.

Small cells represent a new class of base stations. They are helping carriers handle the inundation of mobile data in a more cost effective way. Currently, the move has gone to deployment of small cells in Korea with LTE and in Europe with Vodaphone.

In the U.S. AT&T has already moved from the crawling phase right to the running phase. It is planning to have 40,000 small cells operational by the end of 2015. According to public statements, both Sprint (News - Alert) and Verizon are now starting their early test activities as well. The Small Cell Forum is working to develop realistic worldwide shipment figures for small cells amid a wide variety of numbers from analyst reports.

his year’s Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) saw a lot of interest in regards to the topic of small cells. While expectations remain high for small cells, and some major wireless service providers have made public their plans to deploy large numbers of these network elements, the extent to which small cells actually have been implemented to date is quite limited.

A report from Informa (News - Alert) Telecoms & Media added, “Public access small cells in busy urban areas are set to be one of the defining mobile network trends in the coming years. They are arguably their best tool for bringing massive extra capacity to their mobile networks. As this research shows, the vendors who succeed in this space are going to win the lion’s share of small cell revenues.”