Nokia signs its first official 5G equipment deal with NTT DoCoMo

FRANKFURT, GERMANY — Finland’s Nokia said on Friday it signed its first major deal to supply new 5G wireless radio base stations to Japanese telecom operator NTT DoCoMo, which boasts nearly half of the country’s mobile subscribers.

The contract marks Nokia’s first sizeable deal for its flagship mobile base station equipment based on official global New Radio (NR) standards for the fifth generation of wireless networks, which were only finalised in December 2017.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal contemplates DoCoMo starting commercial 5G network service by 2020, in time for the Tokyo Olympics, Nokia said. Initial installations are expected in greater metropolitan Tokyo with a national roll-out to follow in subsequent years.

Nokia, a major supplier to DoCoMo in both the 3G and 4G network eras, has been working with the Japanese operator since at least 2014 on trials of 5G equipment, which promises far faster data rates, greater capacity and quicker response times.

The 5G antennas and related base stations act as the local connections between users of mobile phones and computing devices with the backbone of any operator’s network.

The new equipment also promises to enable DoCoMo to provide new services for autonomous driving, industrial automation and smarter homes by providing wireless links to millions even billions of wireless sensors. Nokia said it will work with DoCoMo to ensure a smooth transition from existing 4G networks.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook founder Zuckerberg calls for universal access to Internet

BARCELONA -- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday the "whole world deserves to have access to the Internet," to a packed crowd at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Zuckerberg's appearance was one of the most eagerly expected event of the opening day of the congress, which began Monday and runs until Thursday.

"Everyone deserves access to the Internet and I don't understand how we can still be like this in 2016... if there are more and more people with Internet access, it is a business model which works," said Zuckerberg, who highlighted that more clients for Internet providers would then lead to "investment in infrastructure."

He also spoke about the move towards 5G, questioning why the industry was moving so quickly to this level of connectivity when the important thing is that all the world can afford an Internet connection, "not just those who have money to pay for expensive connections."

source: interaksyon.com

EU bets on 5G to catch up in mobile technology race

BRUSSELS/BARCELONA — The European Union is looking to sign agreements with China, Japan, and the United States to cooperate on developing the next generation of mobile broadband as it seeks to help its companies catch up in the race to develop such technologies.

Europe, once a leader in the 1990s in the second-generation GSM technology standard for mobile phone networks moving into the digital era, has fallen behind the United States, Japan, and South Korea in the deployment of the latest 4G standard for mobile broadband services.

The region’s network operators including Britain’s Vodafone and Spain’s Telefonica were slower to move to 4G than Japan, Korea, and the United States and adoption in Europe remains lower compared to other advanced economies.

European policymakers are now trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past and are seeking to be at the forefront of developing the standards for 5G, which promises much faster video downloads, denser network coverage and the possibility of connecting billions of everyday electronic objects to create “the internet of things”.

“With 5G, Europe has a great opportunity to reinvent its telecom industrial landscape,” Guenther Oettinger, the EU’s Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society, told the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.

In June last year the European Commission signed an agreement with South Korea in which the two sides committed to cooperating on setting technical standards and ensure the necessary radio frequencies are able to support the new network.

“It is our intention to sign similar agreements with other key regions of the world, notably Japan, China, and the United States,” Oettinger said.

The Commission will soon start formal discussions on 5G with China, according to a person familiar with the matter, which is also keen to have its say on what 5G should do. China is home to the world’s second-biggest maker of mobile network equipment, Huawei, and ZTE, the fifth biggest.

But the chief executive of France’s Orange said work remained to be done on 4G, whose rollout across Europe has been patchy and slow.

“We need to prepare for 5G but let’s not jump too fast. We should enjoy 4G,” he said.

Most industry experts expect the first commercial deployments of 5G in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Much work remains to be done to set technical standards for the technology, and figure out exactly what it is supposed to do that current 4G gear cannot, experts say.

In the meantime, companies that make mobile network equipment such as Sweden’s Ericsson, Huawei, Finland’s Nokia and France-based Alcatel-Lucent are jockeying for position and carrying out experiments with operators to prepare for 5G.

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is already working with Nokia and Ericsson to develop networks running at high frequencies for use in the 5G wireless era – technology expected to be showcased at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Meanwhile Huawei has said it will invest $600 million in 5G research and expects to have a network ready for deployment by 2020.

“We are closely working with our customers to get to 5G. It is the only way to fully meet the demand of machine to machine technology,” said Huawei’s chief executive Ken Hu.

The head of Nokia, Rajeev Suri, said that he thinks the drive to develop 5G technology promises to be a “three-horse race” between Ericsson, Huawei and his firm, leaving out the fourth biggest equipment maker, Alcatel-Lucent.

“I don’t aspire only to be third,” said Suri on a panel on Tuesday. “We will move up.”

source: interaksyon.com