MulteFire is a scheme to operate LTE in unlicensed spectrum. Potentially anyone could install and operate a system in a very similar way to Wi-Fi. We asked Stephan Litjens, Chairman of the newly formed MulteFire Alliance and Head of Innovation Steering, Nokia, to explain the purpose, method and timeline of the solution. He’s confident we’ll see commercial deployment in about a year from now.

The Enterprise in-building wireless market is very active at the moment, with many announcements from Small Cell vendors. But this isn’t the only technology fighting for market share. We spoke with Scott Willis, incoming CEO at Zinwave, a UK-based DAS vendor, for his perspective on how DAS vendors are responding to the changing shape of the market.

Best known for their outdoor rural small cell solution, Parallel Wireless announced their plans for a radical shakeup of In-Building wireless. We spoke with their CTO, Rajesh Mishra, to understand both commercial and technical aspects.

There have been a number of significant ownership and staffing changes at small cell pioneer ip.access recently. Their new CEO Malcolm Gordon explains how they plan to make it easier for operators to invest in Small Cells, which market segment he sees as most attractive, and discusses the timeframe and relevance of LTE, LTE-U and LAA.

ClearSky offer a neutral host small cell managed service, essentially competing for business with DAS in-building solutions throughout the USA. I spoke with Dean Fresonke, Co-Founder, and challenged him about some of the concerns often raised about this managed Small Cell as a Service approach.

Tom McQuade has been involved with small cells for longer than most, first six years at Picochip and then three years with Radisys. As their General Manager for the CellEngine™ small cell software business, his role involves making difficult choices of where to direct engineering resources, prioritising effort between individual customer demands, evolving standards and longer term product investment. Even with a staff of some 250 engineers across the portfolio (both R&D and customer engagement), some tough decisions have to be made. He shares some insights into the underlying fundamentals behind those trade-offs.

Mike Cronin, CEO of Node-H, has been involved with small cells since their inception, actively participating in the Small Cell Forum and visible at many conferences. His company supply the complete software stack for residential and enterprise small cells, both 3G and LTE, now embedded in over a million units worldwide. He comments on market direction, differentiates indoor from outdoor and covers topics including LAA, VoWiFi, TD-LTE, SON and Virtualisation.

Airspan Networks are one of the few independent vendors to have focussed on LTE rural and urban small cells for some years. Has their time finally come? We spoke with Paul Senior, CTO, who has come up with some novel techniques to squeeze the highest spectral performance out of standard urban small cells using only standard Ethernet backhaul.

Huawei sees a definite role for small cells, both indoor and out. Peter Zhou, their President of Small Cells product line, shares views on their market progress, timescales for LAA and reveals an unusual form factor for the future.

DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems) are usually positioned as the very expensive competitor against the up-and-coming, low cost small cell products. Radisys have been at the forefront of small cell development, providing software solutions for many ODMs and OEM players , so it's something of a surprise to see them talking about DAS.

We asked their senior line product manager, Renuka Bhalerao, for more detail.