• Ericsson: ready for the big 2019 5G push
• Nokia confident of an established lead on 5G telco engagements
• More announcements

CEO Börje Ekholm says Ericsson will switch on 5G globally this year and says Ericsson has already announced 10 deals with named service providers. In an address to analysts and press Ekholm stressed the importance of the ‘race’ to 5G in terms of service providers fighting it out for market share.

“Consumers and enterprises are waiting for 5G,” Ekholm said. “According to Ericsson ConsumerLab research, one-third of smartphone users globally will change either immediately or within six months to a service provider that switches on 5G.”

Ékholm said the first commercial scale 5G beneficiaries will be mobile broadband consumers with massive and highly cost-efficient capacity expansions facilitating new applications in augmented reality and virtual reality in areas such as gaming and sports broadcasts.

Ekholm also highlighted how Ericsson Radio System hardware has been 5G-ready since 2015 and can be used also for 5G New Radio (NR) with a remote software installation.

He claimed that meant  that Ericsson has already shipped more than 3 million 5G-ready radios to its customers worldwide. Ericsson’s unique spectrum sharing capabilities and common core and dynamic orchestration solutions would put Ericsson customers in the lead with 5G, he said.

For more detailed information on Ericssons most recent enhancements to its platforms, Read more...

President and Chief Executive Officer of Nokia, Rajeev Suri, has also been talking to media and analysts in advance of this week's MWC. Suri claims Nokia enjoys world leadership in 5G with the industry's only end-to-end portfolio available in all markets around the world.  He says the company is well-positioned with more than 20 5G contracts, and almost 100 5G engagements with customers in every region of the world.

“We also believe that there will be a virtuous circle of investment as networks are upgraded to meet the demands of 5G and Nokia has the right portfolio at the right time to meet that need. To get a full flavour of Nokia’s current portfolio, Read more...

Samsung Electronics has announced that it has successfully completed the development of the core components of its 5G chipset with its mmWave Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFICs) and Digital/Analog Front End (DAFE) ASICs, supporting 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands. Read more...

Cisco has announced details of its innovation blueprint with Japan’s Rakuten Mobile Network  to build the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud native mobile network, ready for 5G. Read more...

Cisco has been assisting SoftBank to make the world’s first global deployment of Segment Routing on IPv6 (SRv6) networks, the companies claim. Read more...

Foldable phones: Huawei has attempted to grab the MWC devices spotlight by showing off a 5G foldable smartphone. But the sting, it was subsequently discovered, was that the phone will cost an eye-watering €2299. So it’s a show pony rather than a viable product (at this stage). Read more...

Amdocs announces availability of its Open 5G solutions Suite. The portfolio is designed, it says to give service providers the freedom to work with a wide range of innovation partners. Read more...

Kerlink will launch end-to-end Smart IoT Solutions set with Partners aimed at key verticals. The solutions range from logistics & tracking and facility management to building operation and asset monitoring. Read more...

Huawei says it’s completed the first commercial verification of SuperBAND (Phase 1) and the results showed that the average download rate increased by more than 10% after vertical SuperBAND was enabled. Read more...

Working Group Two (WG2) has announced a platform offering cloud-managed mobile network, running both control and user plane on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The WG2 platform allows mobile operators and enterprises to create new services through a simple cloud-based API. Read more...

Cisco and Google Station say they aim to include one billion more people in the growth opportunities of the digital economy. The programme will provide communities hampered by limited connectivity with sustainable public Wi-Fi that is easily accessible, secure, fast, and reliable, the companies claim. Read more...