Nokia made the first ever demonstration of a 5G network running on commercial platforms as part of its showcase at 5G World from 29-30 June, that will underline the momentum of bringing 5G to commercial reality.
Following the successful launch in February of the industry-first 5G-ready AirScale Radio Access technology, Nokia demonstrated AirScale working together with its Cloud Packet Core, running on a Nokia AirFrame data center platform, the foundation of a commercial 5G architecture.
This demonstration was one of a number of activities at 5G World that Nokia conducted to update the industry on its progress in realizing the potential of 5G and the creation of a seamless fabric of dynamic networks serving a multi-connected world. Via product and technology demonstrations as well as keynote sessions, Nokia explained how it is accelerating the development and standardization of 5G and providing the technological means for operators to prepare and unlock the full potential of their networks.
By 2020, full 5G services are expected to be launched, enabling unprecedented levels of coverage and capacity as well as increases in speeds, enhanced energy efficiency and reductions in latency. 5G networks will provide ubiquitous connectivity for the 46 billion connected devices Bell Labs Consulting estimates will be in use, serving the augmented real-world and virtual reality needs of people and application areas such as autonomous cars, industrial automation and remote robotics, smart cities and personal healthcare.
Nokia Bell Labs demonstrated a new concept in Network Slicing, which will create and automatically map capabilities for the radio, transport, core and application layers into a discreet network 'slice'. Using cloud orchestration, new services can be created instantly and delivered to meet the specific and diverse demands of any customer or application, such as providing low-latency support to control machines in a factory, or providing extreme high-speed broadband to enterprises and homes.
Hossein Moiin said: "Nokia is a leading force in driving 5G standardization and our technology innovations are allowing the industry to move more rapidly toward commercial 5G systems. By introducing 5G-ready technologies now in our commercial solutions, which support today's LTE-Advanced and the upcoming LTE-Advanced Pro / Pro II, our customers can smartly bridge their networks to 5G. This will allow them to create and capture new business and meet the massive data demand from people and IoT as it develops."
These latest developments underscore the impact of the company's increased research and development efforts focused around 5G, and the scale of its R&D capacity, with over 40,000 scientists and engineers globally.
