Dan Rodriguez of Intel and Michael Clever of Nokia examine the current position in the convergence of cloud services and communications networks and debate where the industry needs to go next in terms of network transformation for the dawning 5G era. Collaboration and partnership between vendors and CSPs is now fast becoming the norm across the industry and Intel and Nokia are no exception. In particular they are working together to ensure that core networks will evolve to meet the needs and use cases of 5G. Such collaborative commitment means that Intel's platforms will have to evolve themselves as well as Nokia's and the two companies have announced that they are jointly opening two 5G solution labs (one in the US and the other in Finland) with the intent of testing and accelerating the commercial readiness of the next all-import and and epoch-making wireless standard. Nokia's big push into 5G comes at a pivotal time both for the Finnish company and the greater comms industry. The smartphone market is approaching saturation and telcos and CSPs are urgently seeking new avenues of growth. With the IoT market primed to explode all the big telecoms players are hitching their stars to 5G wagon as the way to support Internet-connected devices. Here Nokia is operating from a position of particular strength. It claims to be the global leader in 4G with a market share in excess of 30 per cent. Meanwhile, Intel has a major focus on ensuring that it can help ensure that the core network will evolve to meet all the requirements and demands that 5G will place upon it.

​FILMED AT: Mobile World Congress 2017, Barcelona