Spanish operator Telefónica has picked Nokia to provide its 4G and 5G core network to serve enterprises in its home market. It said the Finnish firm’s packet core solutions will support its rollout of low-latency services like drone fleets, industrial robots, smart meters, and other higher-end enterprise IoT solutions. It will deploy Nokia’s “cloud-native software solutions on top of its telco cloud and as packet core appliances on enterprise premises”, it said.
Nokia said it had the most operator customers, of any vendor, for standalone 5G (5G SA) core networks at the end of 2024, with 1233 in total. It already supplies Telefónica in Spain with 5G radio network (RAN) hardware, fiber-optic XGSPON technology, IP and optical transport networks, plus network analytics and APIs. Telefónica will deploy Nokia’s cloud gateway and ‘mediation’ services on its telco cloud for enterprises to manage and route user traffic.
Erez Sverdlov, vice president of cloud and network services for Nokia in Europe, commented: “We are pleased to support Telefónica in strengthening the enterprise customer experience in Spain. Beyond better data capacity, latency, and reliability, our packet core will also provide a local breakout of user traffic with our latest generation appliances, providing reduced latency and improved security.”
Meanwhile, Telefónica has said it is working with the government of Biscay, in the Basque country in Spain, to develop its industrial strategy in the territory, and make it a major global centre for quantum technology. The local government of Biscay has nurtured a local R&D ecosystem (as the BasQ Alliance) around quantum technology since 2021, involving public and private groups, including universities, research centres, corporations, and startups.
Telefónica has been researching quantum solutions for 10 years, it said – on the “most stable and advanced quantum network infrastructures in Europe”, formed by its own “industrial ring”, connected to research and technology sites in the country. Quantum technologies will “drive breakthroughs” in finance, energy, telecoms, medicine, mobility, chemicals, and manufacturing, it said.
A statement said: “The main levers that will allow progress in this direction are quantum computing, with computers that will have the capacity to solve very complex problems that cannot be solved today with traditional computers; quantum communications and cryptography, which bring extremely secure communication methods; and quantum sensors, which can provide hyper-precise measurements.
The new framework deal with the government of Biscay will see Japanese firm Fujitsu’s so-called Digital Annelaer (DA) product, billed the world’s first “quantum-inspired digital technology architecture”, housed at a Telefónica office in Biscay. “This is the first DA hosted in infrastructures outside Japan in history. [It] is capable of solving problems of up to 100,000 variables, making use of different quantum phenomena to speed up calculations.”
Said phenomena include quantum techniques in superposition, entanglement, and tunnel effect. Telefónica said: “It will have a specific platform for quantum emulations. The aim is to be able to emulate the operation of quantum circuits, which is achieved by running software on a classical digital computer based on supercomputing (HPC), thus obtaining several emulation modes: state vector, tensor networks, and MPS (Matrix Product State).”
Telefónica will provide remote access to Fujitsu’s quantum computing and emulation platforms. These will complement those already provided by Telefónica to the local government. The Spanish firm said: “Biscay is [now] the place in the world with access to more quantum platforms of different technologies and different manufacturers.” These include products from AWS, DWave, IBM, IONQ, IQM, Microsoft, OQC, Pascal, qci Quantum Circuits, Qilimanjaro, QUANTINUUM, QuEra and Rigetti.
Manuel Ángel Alonso, northern territory director for Telefónica Spain, said: “This… project is as necessary as it is exciting. Quantum computing is set to change the rules of the game at many levels. It is essential to be prepared to face its risks and also to benefit from the opportunity it represents. Telefónica has been working on quantum computing for more than a decade. Collaborating with a public institution that is committed to technology is the way forward.”
