Nokia highlights interest from operators in the U.S. and Asia
Finnish vendor Nokia has announced plans to implement early 5G specifications, enhancing its “5G First” portfolio with the 3GPP 5G Phase I protocol, to meet growing interest for 5G mobility applications emerging from telecommunications operators primarily in markets like the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea.
Company reps said it will push for accelerated 3GPP industry standardization while building on early customer experiences with its 5G First end-to-end solution launched in February during Mobile World Congress (MWC). This 5G NR (New Radio) air interface standard, which is due in early 2018, is designed to support a wide variety of 5G devices and services.
The infrastructure vendor also said it will continue to evolve and expand 5G FIRST as an end-to-end solution, designed to drive broader market adoption of 5G, via both mobility and fixed applications, as well as testing multiple 5G use cases. Nokia is building on extensive field experience already gained with Nokia 5G FIRST, which has generated insights into areas such as use of radio propagation in higher frequencies, massive MIMO and beamforming, integration with existing networks versus standalone implementations, the use of small cells in 5G deployments and the role of cloud-native core and cloud-based RAN technologies
”Through 5G First, Nokia is evolving its 5G strategy to drive the industry rapidly towards the adoption of standards-based commercial applications as early as 2019,” said Marc Rouanne, president of mobile networks at Nokia.
“Doing so will require broad cross-industry support, and we call upon regulators and governments to free up and enable the use of spectrum at low-, mid- and high-frequency bands for trials,” said Rouanne.
Nokia 5G FIRST comprises its radio access network (RAN) including Nokia AirScale massive MIMO Adaptive Antennas, packet core and mobile transport solutions as well as a full service offer using Intel architecture and the Intel 5G modem.
