30th January 2014. The Small Cell Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports small cell deployment worldwide, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), a standards consortium working to make spatial information an integral part of the global information infrastructure, today announced that the two bodies have signed a liaison agreement with an initial focus on developing support for location based services within mobile networks based on small cells. Small cells can be used to support location services in a range of indoor locations including: navigation in airports, retail unit location in shopping centers and asset location in hospitals and warehouses.
As part of the agreement the Small Cell Forum and the OGC will cooperatively develop a joint document that indicates to operators which OGC standards are relevant for small cell based location based services within the context of mobile networks and will also exchange technical and marketing information about the use of location based services for small cells and small cell based services.
"The use of small cells in mobile networks around the globe can bring benefits to operators, their customers and society at large,” said George Percivall, OGC’s Chief Engineer. “Information about the locations of cells, their coverage areas, proximity to barriers, etc. is of critical importance in maximizing the value received by all these stakeholders. We look forward to working with the Small Cell Forum to help enable the flow of such location information."
"Accurate indoor location information has become a critical component to the mobile user experience,” said Andy Germano, Vice President Americas at the Small Cell Forum. “By working together with the OGC the Small Cell Forum can help ensure that mobile operators can provide high quality location information both indoors and out. We look forward to working together to help enable compelling user experiences using location and small cells.”
About the OGC:
The OGC (http://www.opengeospatial. org/contact ) is an international consortium of more than 475 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be spatially enabled.
About the Small Cell Forum (SCF):
The Small Cell Forum (www.smallcellforum.org), supports the wide-scale adoption of small cells. Small cells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence. They provide improved cellular coverage, capacity and applications for homes and enterprises as well as metropolitan and rural public spaces. They include technologies variously described as femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. The Forum has in excess of 150 members including 68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers – 46 per cent of the global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.
