Amartus invites satellite and 5G service providers to join MEF’s new initiative on mobile site connectivity standard

Amartus-led MEF BoF session, which was held during the virtual MEF Annual Members Meeting on July 20, is likely to result in a new MEF initiative to address the issue of mobile site connectivity and the gap in the MEF current standardization. All satellite and 5G service providers are invited to join the initiative.

The Birds of a Feather (BoF) session was led by Bartosz Michalik, Principal Architect at Amartus, who initiated a discussion on generalizing geographic site APIs for the satellite and mobility markets. The discussion engaged several leading representatives of the industry, including OneWeb which presented satellite use cases during the session and has already supported the initiative.

The need to fill in the gap in mobile site connectivity standards 

Currently, MEF supports Geographic Site APIs (based on TMF 674). However, for satellite service providers and 5G providers, this is insufficient since not all locations to which they deliver access are geographic locations with a permanent position.

Think of a data link delivered to a ship or a plane, train or anything similar. Representing these service delivery sites is not possible within the current MEF 79 standard. The idea is to generalize the standard to Site APIs that support both geographic and non-geographic sites.

The initial discussion about this topic initiated by Amartus is likely to lead to a new MEF initiative to address this issue in MEF standards. We are looking forward to the support and contribution of all satellite and 5G service providers in this initiative.

The work of the initiative is coordinated by Bartosz Michalik so feel free to contact him to discuss how you can contribute to the initiative.