Stoke becomes first member of renamed Small Cell Forum, formerly known as Femto Forum
Mobile broadband gateway developer Stoke has become the first new member of the Small Cell Forum (formerly The Femto Forum), underscoring the increasingly close alignment of both organisations' goals.
Announcing its name change in February, the Small Cell Forum stated it would support the crossover between small cells and other relevant technologies in the heterogeneous network (hetnet) environment, including Wi-Fi, cloud RAN and macrocells.
Stoke's solutions deliver the industry's broadest range of support for multiple types of access technologies, providing standards-based, cost effective and high performance functionality including IPSec and aggregation at the Evolved Packet Edge (a critical boundary between the radio access network and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC).
The hetnet – a varied backhaul network that uses multiple types of small cell and Wi-Fi backhaul technologies – is a solution to help contain costs and improve mobile broadband service delivery. However, as detailed in The Small Cell Forum's white paper, 'Integrated Femto Wi-Fi Networks', the industry needs to look beyond simply rolling out Wi-Fi hotspots and small cells in isolation, said the Small Cell Forum. By integrating the technologies at the network level, they open up valuable new traffic management opportunities that will create a hetnet that is greater than the sum of its parts, the group added.
'We welcome Stoke as an innovative new member,' said Professor Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Small Cell Forum. 'Stoke is doing valuable work so we expect them to play a valuable role in our Working Group activities, supporting the organization's goal of influencing the future of the industry at large.'
Noted Dave Williams, CTO of Stoke: 'The Small Cell Forum is championing the integration of key functions into a single network element, something that Stoke can deliver today, and we are excited to join the organization at this pivotal time in its development. The new LTE environment is in urgent need of streamlined, high performance solutions supporting multiple functions at the Evolved Packet Edge. We look forward to working together to validate the role of multi-service security and het net aggregation functionality at the optimal point in mobile broadband networks.'
