ITSF 2011 took place early November in Edinburgh, Scotland with more than 140 delegates representing global telecom vendors, fixed and mobile operators and academic institutions.

A full three days technical programme started with a welcome by Tommy Cook of Calnex Solutions to his home town Edinburgh, followed by a keynote from David W Allan, the creator of the Allan Variance who was later appointed as the annual ITSF Time Lord 2011.

Hot topics for discussion during the conference included the emergence of “small cells” and the challenge of synchronising these low cost local base stations for future mobile operations.  GNSS vulnerability and the impact of GPS jamming to GPS based timing solutions were discussed in a number of papers.  At last real PTP developments were in evidence with feedback from operators and vendors based on practical experience of rolled out technology.  Once more getting time accuracy (phase) to less than a microsecond is the big challenge. The usual metrics of time measurement were presented with the different methods of monitoring time behaviour in packet based networks being discussed at length.

The conference concluded with a session on Standards and work in progress from within the ITU.  An interactive panel debate took place with feedback coming from delegates to highlight areas of possible standardisation.

The conference held its usual ice breaker event at the end of the first day at Edinburgh Castle where delegates had a private viewing of the Scottish Crown Jewels.  At the speaker dinner at the end of the second day the annual Time Lord award was presented to David W Allan who was introduced by his colleague from NIST days, and ITSF Steering Group Member, Marc Weiss.

For further information on the ITSF Conference and to review past papers please visit www.telecom-sync.com and register your interest for the 2012 conference to be held in Nice, France 6-8^th November.