The application discloses an opening and dormancy method for small cells. The method comprises an establishing process of double connections of a control plane and a user plane which are completely separated: control plane connections are established between UE and a macro base station, and data plane connections are established between the UE and small cell base stations; a current load of the macro base station and current loads of the opened small cell base stations are calculated by the macro base station and the opened small cell base stations, and, when the current load of the certain base station is greater than a set first threshold and exceeds a set first time length, the certain base station is configured with the accessed UE and performs an adjacent region finding measurement; the corresponding UE determines whether adjacent regions of a cell where the corresponding base station is located are at opening or dormancy states; and the corresponding UE determines the adjacent regions are at the dormancy states according to a find reference signal sent by the dormant adjacent region. The macro base station obtains state information of the various adjacent regions of all the UE of the corresponding base stations, a dormant small cell which unloads flow most effectively is selected and then is opened, the data plane of the UE of the corresponding small cell of an overload part is connected and transferred to the opened dormant small cell, the control panel is remained in the macro base station, and the double connection that the control plane and the user plane are separated is established. Through application of the method, load sharing can be achieved, a switching frequency is reduced at the same time, and a signaling expense is reduced.