Practical guidance on 5G private fitting for all shapes and sizes
Mobile infrastructure steering group the Small Cell Forum (SCF) claims to have developed a blueprint for making a private cellular network to fit industrial bodies of any shapes or size. While theoretical blueprints from vendors are too sketchy, SCF claims it offers clear guidelines forged by its members’ hard-won practical experience.
The initiative is led by Ravi Sinha, from SCF Board company and Reliance Jio, India’s biggest 4G network operator.
Practical experience written into the plans
The blueprints for fulfilling the potential of private 5G networks go beyond technical specifications to provide common guidelines, based on practical experience. The SCF promises to provide the essential details which are too often missing from the case studies provided by marketing departments of mobile operators.
In a release SCF promises ‘specific scenarios and industries’ for ‘specific purposes’. This, it claims, will save a significant amount of time and money for each deployment.
In the 5G-Era, as the ‘mobile eco-system’ expands, network builders must anticipate the technologies, specifications and blueprints needed to drive the industries and connected cities of the future, according to Sinha.
Map is getting confusing
“For vendors, deployers and operators, and their customers, the technology roadmap is becoming increasingly complex,” said Sinha.
SCF plans to give them practical, use-case focused blueprints that simplify the complexities and build robust, scalable and sustainable solutions to key industrial problems. Since this is an ambitious programme SCF is looking to recruit a diverse spectrum of partners to support the initiative.
It’s more practical to go private
Only private networks will bridge the gap between the services available now and business requirements. Small cells, especially 5G small cells, will provide the options through the network types including Wi-Fi 6, Edge Computing and Cloud based creations. SCF is launching the blueprints initiative within its newly formed Emerging Technology Group.
“Existing solutions for private, enterprise cellular networks have been tailored to single use-cases,” said SCF chair Dr Prabhakar Chitrapu, “the industry needs flexible, yet specific, end-to-end blueprints for scalable private networks that can be systematically replicated.”