10th February 2022, London, UK – Small Cell Forum (SCF) today announced it has appointed wireless veteran Simon Fletcher as its Chief Strategy Officer, drawing on 25 years direct industry experience and work as an advisor to governments, regulators and big business.

SCF CEO Sue Monahan said: ‘We’re delighted to have someone with Simon’s knowledge and contacts in the CSO role. Simon’s brief is to continue to build and strengthen SCF’s technical and regulatory support for the growing ecosystem of service providers that includes neutral hosts, private network operators, and systems integrators. Our strategy is founded on trusted, collaborative partnerships with MNOs, enterprises and policy makers. Simon has strong, long-term relationships with these stakeholders.’

Simon brings a broad range of global wireless experience, from launching 3G trial networks at NEC, work on the evolution of (e)CPRI, 3GPP RAN1/2 small cell and macro architectures, telco equipment development in joint ventures, to commercial rollouts including smart cities, stadiums, commercial property, transport hubs and IoT. In addition to sitting on the UK5G Advisory Board, he continues as a Small Cell SIG Champion at Cambridge Wireless and CTO of wireless experts Real Wireless.

Simon Fletcher said: ‘SCF is one of the industry’s most respected SDOs and I’m delighted to join the organisation as it helps drive and shape an important phase in the evolution of service models and architectures plotting a path through 5G-Advanced and 6G.

Agile, low-cost mobile infrastructure enabled by open architectures and diversified supply chains is key to the digital transformation of industry and enterprise. Small cells are an essential enabler for the new business models and ecosystems underpinning sustainable change. I believe SCF is uniquely placed to help policy-makers, service providers and equipment vendors maximise the potential and overcome the hurdles associated with this critical inflection point for our industry.’

Small Cell Forum Chair Prabhakar Chitrapu, added, ‘Simon’s experience will be invaluable in helping us further develop our strong technical and commercial base, to help guide the wider small cell ecosystem through an evolving wireless landscape.’

Major SCF work streams for 2022 include:

• Scalable commercial models for neutral host private network deployments are critical to achieving 5G and industry goals. SCF is focused on establishing global best practice and blueprints that bring confidence to enterprise and inform policy and regulation.
• Building on FAPI, nFAPI and Open fronthaul workstreams to provide practical options for Open RAN with a strong focus on the environments in which Open RAN deployments will succeed first.
• Detailed specification at product and component impact level to make Open RAN and private wireless readily deployable, reducing cost and risk.