The Small Cell Forum has announced AT&T’s David Orloff will act as the group’s new Chair, replacing Alan Law who served the organization for two years.

The announcement has been made ahead of the forum’s Rome plenary in September, where it will launch a new work programme. Orloff ‘s priorities will focus on two main streams; Deploying Hyperdense Networks and Enabling Digitized Enterprise, tying together the teams work over the last two years across the HetNet and laying out the roadmap to 5G.

The work streams will bring together a number of different players in the industry, including AT&T, Reliance Jio and Airhop, who will act as champions for the Deploying Hyperdense Networks stream, whereas Vodafone, Cisco, Huawei and Spidercloud will act as champions for Enabling Digitized Enterprise.

“There are a lot of smart people out there working on access technology for 5G. Small Cell Forum is focused on delivering the enabling technologies and architecture to ensure the automation, service delivery and interoperability required to make 5G a success,” said Orloff. “I am honored to take this role at an extremely exciting time for small cells, which are now poised to be the foundation of the dense HetNet and of 5G architectures.”

“I would like to thank Alan Law for his stellar leadership at a critical time for the industry,” said Sue Monahan, CEO of Small Cell Forum. “Small cells have made enormous progress and are set to be the primary enabler of future networks for enterprise, dense urban and rural services. The Forum under Alan’s leadership over the last two years has been a major catalyst for that growth, but there are still many challenges ahead. I know David, with his deep level of experience of this industry and passion for the technology, will be the ideal person to take the Forum’s work even further.”

The Small Cell Forum has been quite active in recent months, most notably publishing the first components of Release 7, which is designed to provide the foundations for the 5G HetNet of the future. The 20 documents which make up Release 7, include a vision of the HetNet of the future, as well as research into market drivers. The forum estimates 85% of all cells will be of the ‘small’ variety by 2020, as 5G takes more of a hold over the industry.