Small cells have gone through an Alice in Wonderland experience since their inception. First they became smaller and smaller, as pioneers got to grips with integrated SoCs and lightweight housings. Then, like Alice eating the magic cake, they started to get larger again, taking on many of the features of full-sized base stations. Most outdoor public access deployments have revolved around relatively large, high-powered picocells rather in the early stages. However, if operators are to achieve the dense networks they need to support areas of high usage, vendors will need to find the bottle with ‘drink me’ on its label, and shrink their cells’ footprint and power consumption (and price) right down again. Since Qualcomm demonstrated what it claimed to…