30th January 2014. The Small Cell Forum, the independent industry and operatorassociation that supports small cell deployment worldwide, and the Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC), a standards consortium working to make spatial information an integralpart of the global information infrastructure, today announced that the twobodies have signed a liaison agreement with an initial focus on developingsupport for location based serviceswithin mobile networks based on small cells. Small cells can be used to supportlocation services in a range of indoor locations including: navigation inairports, retail unit location in shopping centers and asset location inhospitals and warehouses.
As part of the agreement the Small Cell Forum and the OGC willcooperatively develop a joint document that indicates to operators which OGC standardsare relevant for small cell based location based services within the context ofmobile networks and will also exchange technical and marketing information aboutthe use of location based services for small cells and small cell basedservices.
“The use ofsmall cells in mobile networks around the globe can bring benefits tooperators, their customers and society at large,” said George Percivall, OGC'sChief Engineer. “Information about the locations of cells, their coverageareas, proximity to barriers, etc. is of critical importance in maximizing thevalue received by all these stakeholders. We look forward to working with theSmall Cell Forum to help enable the flow of such location information.”
“Accurate indoorlocation information has become a critical component to the mobile userexperience,” said Andy Germano, Vice President Americas at the Small Cell Forum.“By working together with the OGC the Small Cell Forum can help ensure thatmobile operators can provide high quality location information both indoors andout. We look forward to working together to help enable compelling userexperiences using location and small cells.”
About the OGC:
The OGC (http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact) is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, governmentagencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensusprocess to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standardssupport interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wirelessand location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technologydevelopers to make geospatial information and services accessible and usefulwith any application that needs to be spatially enabled.
About theSmall Cell Forum (SCF):
The Small Cell Forum (www.smallcellforum.org), supports thewide-scale adoption of small cells. Small cells are low-power wireless accesspoints that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and featureedge-based intelligence. They provide improved cellular coverage, capacity andapplications for homes and enterprises as well as metropolitan and rural publicspaces. They include technologies variously described as femtocells, picocells,microcells and metrocells. The Forum has in excess of 150 members including 68operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers – 46 per cent ofthe global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, contentproviders and innovative start-ups.
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