What’s up with… Nokia, Huawei, Vodafone

• Nokia enhances software-defined access offer
• And for Finnish vendor, the only way is ethics
• Huawei gets a verbal kicking in India
• Vodafone UK boasts carbon emission success

Nokia pitch for software-defines broadband networks, its call for an ethical 5G industry, and Huawei’s latest tongue-lashing lead this news pack.

Nokia has enhanced its Altiplano cloud platform by launching Cloud Acceleration Services to help operators “build and maintain personalized SDN solutions, making sure all network nodes - third party, virtual and legacy - find their place in the network.” Find out more in this announcement. 

The Finnish vendor has also published a “call to action to deliver an ethical and sustainable 5G future… that delivers economic prosperity, opportunity for all people and a healthier planet. The company has outlined its commitments but calls on individuals, business and government to work together to achieve the vision.” Find out more here.

Ex-spook spooks Huawei… Vikram Sood, the former head of the ‘Research and Analysis Wing,’ India's foreign intelligence agency, has well and truly put the boot into Huawei. With the nation still incredibly angry after incursions by the Chinese army into Indian territory (and the resultant deaths of Indian soldiers) in June this year, Sood has tapped into the zeitgeist of rage and let rip at the comms equipment manufacturer. In his book,The Ultimate Goal: A Former R&AW Chief Deconstructs How Nations Construct Narratives, the ex-spook writes: "China’s attitude towards India and its unremittingly hostile geo-political manoeuvres to hurt the nation’s interests that would make the latter wary of Huawei… There are strategic, technological, geopolitical and legal reasons to suggest that it would be ‘risky’ to allow Huawei, with its state-structured backing, to launch operations in India’s critical infrastructure." What's more, Huawei may like "to masquerade as an independent entity, but anyone in the trade would know that this is simply not the case. The Chinese government financed Huawei and had few moral compunctions in helping intellectual property theft." His trenchant views are published as the Indian government considers whether or not Huawei should be allowed to install its equipment in the sub-continent's strategic 5G networks. Vikram Sood thinks not. So do many of his countrymen and women.

Vodafone UK says it has reduced its energy usage “by 100 gigawatt hours in three years, preventing 25,000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and saving the company £10 million.” To put that into context, Vodafone estimates that the amount of energy saved “could power a town with a population of 65,000 people for a whole year.” To find out more, read this blog.

Still with Vodafone UK… It says it has hooked up with autonomous vehicle consortium, Midlands Future Mobility, to deploy 5G on key test routes in the West Midlands. “Over 300 miles of West Midlands’ roads are set to trial 5G-connected roads and autonomous vehicles with the aim of making UK roads safer and shortening journey times,” notes the operator in this announcement.

The TM Forum and MEF are happy API chappies… or, to put it in a more mature way, in response to major operator demand, they have aligned their “API standards in order to automate B2B services and provide end-users with a similar buying experience to cloud providers.” Read more.

That news came at the start of the TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World 2020 event, which began its six-week programme yesterday. To mark the occasion, the TMF also announced that Ericsson, Huawei, NTT and Salesforce are among the 12 companies to have committed to the development of the Forum’s Open Digital Architecture, taking the total number of companies signed up to the cause to 42. Read more.

A group of US Senators has introduced what they call the Beat China by Harnessing Important, National Airwaves for 5G Act of 2020, or the Beat CHINA for 5G Act of 2020. Here’s the opening gambit, which I will just leave here for your discernment: “Americans have experienced the importance of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, and our reliance on wireless-connected devices will only grow in the future. It is essential for the U.S. to win the technological race against China, and we need to unleash critical mid-band spectrum to get us there.” If you want, you can read more here.