Cisco and Neul have joined the Multefire Alliance, as members gear up to release a specification for the “LTE like” technology during the fourth quarter of 2016.
Both companies join the likes of Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm in the alliance, which aims to use small cells and the fair use of spectrum in bands such as 5GHz to provide connectivity to enterprises.
IoT player Neul said the technology was an important development that would have implications for the manufacturing, warehousing, port and mining industries.
Paul Mankiewich, Vice-President, Chief Technology Officer, Cisco, said: “We are eager to join the Alliance to explore the potential of MulteFire technology, and lend both our expertise and our customers’ requirements to continue industry discussions about fair use of unlicensed spectrum for future modes of wireless service delivery.”
[Read more – Multefire needs device and business support to take off]
The alliance is hosting an open day and technical workshop in Beijing today (13 June) to discuss potential use cases of the technology.
Last month, Nokia and the Saudi Telecom Company held the first live trial of the technology.
Stephan Litjens, MulteFire Alliance Board Chair and head of Innovation Steering, Nokia, added: “Since launching the MulteFire Alliance at the end of 2015, we’ve made significant progress in the development of MulteFire and have demonstrated multiple proof points of the technology, including harmonious coexistence with Wi-Fi in the same spectrum and neutral host capabilities.”
He added that work is continuing on developing the Multefire specification, which he said would follow advancements based on 3GPP Releases 13 and 14, including the ability to have uplink and downlink in unlicensed bands.