Nokia also announced a 5G field trial in Italy in partnership with Vodafone
BARCELONA- Nokia and China Mobile have inked a deal under which the two firms will jointly investigate how the Chinese operator can extend its service offerings for vertical markets using the capabilities of 5G technology.
The joint research, which was announced during the 2018 Mobile World Congress, which takes place in Barcelona, Spain, this week, will focus on how industries could benefit from the growth of smart cities, smart transportation and intelligent video analytics, Nokia said.
The Finnish vendor also highlighted that the deployment of 5G will allow China Mobile to leverage network slicing to support new services and businesses simultaneously with different service level requirements. Under the agreement, which extends Nokia and China Mobile’s existing 5G collaboration, the companies will jointly research and trial use-cases leveraging Nokia 5G Future X network architecture as well as NB-IoT and multi-access edge computing (MEC). The research, which will take place at China Mobile’s 5G joint innovation lab, will aim to better understand how industries can be integrated into the smart city ecosystem to take advantage of the massive new connectivity of people and things.
Nokia also said that the joint research will also focus on how businesses such as logistics and car rental companies can benefit from the widespread introduction of 5G-connected automated vehicles. Nokia and China Mobile will also expand the existing Car2X trial ecosystem in Wuzhen, China, to advance the use of automated vehicles, as well as technologies that improve vehicle safety.
“Together with China Mobile we will leverage 5G to identify the applications that meet future industry needs. We are committed to delivering open architecture development to allow operators such as China Mobile to leverage network intelligence,” said Marc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia.
During the event, Nokia also announced that the company has started a 5G trial in Milan, Italy, in partnership with Italian telco Vodafone Italy. The Nordic vendor said that the first 5G site installations had been deployed in December and a demonstration of high-definition video over pre-standard standalone 5G was successfully performed on a live 5G site in one of the main central locations of Milan.
As the technology partner of Vodafone Italy’s 5G Trial in Milan, Nokia will provide 5G network and application solutions to support the creation of a city-wide 5G test network.
The initial 5G test, performed with an experimental device connected to the Nokia massive MIMO 5G solution, demonstrated how the low latency of 5G can enhance the customer experience of video applications. As part of the 5G trial in Milan, Vodafone and Nokia will also develop specific advanced use cases across various industries.
In the trial, Nokia will also use its 5G AirScale massive MIMO antenna, which supports both 4G and 5G, AirScale baseband upgraded to support 5G, and Cloud Packet Core. Nokia will also provide network deployment, integration and network performance optimization throughout the trial.
