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 operators, notably in markets like US, China, Japan and South Korea.
In a statement, Nokia said the vendor will push for accelerated 3GPP industry standardization while building on early customer experiences with its Nokia 5G First end-to-end solution, launched last February.
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.
Nokia said it is building on extensive field experience already gained with Nokia 5G First, which has generated valuable insights into areas such as the 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 importance of cloud native core and cloud 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.