Displaying items by tag: LTE

Nokia has announced a services deal with A1 Austria, building on the leadership of both companies in the Austrian enterprise market.

In this three-year contract, started earlier in 2020, Nokia is providing its industrial-grade private wireless technology and services for all existing and new A1 Austria LTE and 5G enterprise campus network deployments.

As part of the deal, Nokia will provide operational support and care for all existing campus networks, ensuring adherence to even the most challenging service level agreements (SLAs) and quality of services (QoS) requirements. With the support of Nokia, A1 Austria will accelerate the digital transformation of its enterprise customers. A1 and Nokia have already successfully deployed a number of private wireless campus networks in Austria, including installations at Magna Steyr, Vienna Airport and 5G Playground Carinthia.

Nokia is now the technology partner of A1 Austria, ensuring high-performance 4.9G/LTE 5G private wireless network solutions. In addition, A1 and its customers benefit from Nokia’s globally proven capabilities in digitalization, automation, AI and network slicing.

A1 Austria is a global lead customer for Nokia’s network slicing technology in 4G and 5G mobile networks, a key functionality for enterprise networking which A1 Austria is planning to make available nationwide. Private wireless networks are ideal for the business-critical communication requirements of factories, logistic hubs, and other enterprise verticals along with public safety organizations.

According to Mobile Experts1, the global private LTE and 5G market is anticipated to triple by 2025 as a variety of industries are upgrading their investment in private wireless networks to support industrial operations.

Alexander Stock, CTO at A1 Austria, said, “This deal reinforces the long-standing collaboration between A1 and Nokia, including an agreement to expand next-generation 5G mobile communications in Austria. A1 is now a clear leader in enterprise in Austria and, together with Nokia as its technology partner, we are looking forward to quickly rolling out new deployments.”

Friedrich Trawöger, Head of Operate and Managed Services at Nokia, said, “As operators like A1 Austria diversify their portfolios with new services and business innovation to digitalize industries, Nokia is in place to deliver proven expertise in the deployment and operation of business-critical private network solutions. We have had significant success on a number of executed projects with A1 in Austria and this deal will further position both companies as leaders in the private LTE and 5G domain.”  

In addition to the services contract, Nokia provides A1 Austria the infrastructure, software and services for setting up the private LTE networks. This includes a micro core network, AirFrame servers, small or macro cells, as well as professional services.

Nokia has announced that it has expanded the 4G footprint of the Azerbaijan-based mobile operator, Azercell Telecom, with the installation of its AirScale 4G base stations at more than 1,400 sites across the country.

Nokia’s AirScale Radio Access solutions will provide Azercell with high-speed mobile connectivity to cater for increased demand as well as providing a clear migration path in the future. Nokia is the sole supplier in this deal and will replace the former 4G provider and develop the network further.

The deal will be the first large-scale regional deployment of 4G services outside of the capital city of Baku. Azercell will utilize Nokia’s Single RAN solution, which is an industry-first commercial end-to-end solution that offers huge capacity scaling and market-leading latency. It will reduce complexity, increase cost efficiencies, and enable a smooth upgrade path in the future via a software update.  

Azercell will also utilize Nokia Software’s NetAct Cloud network management system, which is cloud-agnostic and meets customer demands for software-only delivery. It is deployed on the same data center platforms as other IT and telco systems for increased agility and lower operational costs. NetAct manages both radio and core networks and provides applications for fault management, configuration management, network and administration management, performance management, and security management.

The deal includes Nokia’s services for network design, deployment, and optimization. Installation began at the end of 2018 and was completed in July 2020.

Azercell is the largest operator in Azerbaijan and has prioritized increasing the geographic coverage of 4G with plans to roll out across the whole country including semi-urban and rural regions. Azercell is also planning to deploy low-power, wide-area NB-IoT services.  

Marat Hamidov, Director of Network Technology Department at Azercell, said, “With more than 5 million customers, Azercell has improved and expanded its 4G network across the country with Nokia to provide its population with equal technological opportunities and the latest innovations through its high-speed Internet. It is worth mentioning that a European benchmarking test, conducted by “Systemics” in Azerbaijan, confirmed that Azercell provided the highest quality of 4G services in all the regions of the country. We look forward to a long partnership with Nokia.”

Mikko Lavanti, Market Unit Head, Central East and Central Asia at Nokia, said, “We are delighted to support Azercell in their efforts to deploy nationwide 4G connectivity. A high-performing 4G network is absolutely fundamental, and with our AirScale solution, we also offer a simple upgrade to the next technological era when Azercell is ready. I look forward to developing a long-standing and close-working partnership with Azercell and helping in its continued efforts to deliver best-in-class connectivity to subscribers across the country.”

Nokia has announced it has partnered with Vivo to provide private wireless services for Vale’s Carajás mine in Brazil.

The service will be part of an Industry 4.0 project by Vale to deploy autonomous drill platforms and trucks. The project will increase productivity at the mine and improve worker safety. The network will be also used for mine-wide communications between workers. Vale plans to expand the technology to other mines currently using older WiMax solutions.

Nokia is currently working with several mining operators worldwide to deploy private wireless networks based on LTE, with plans to migrate to 5G in the future.

Autonomous ore trucks have been shown to increase productivity by 15% and reduce fuel and maintenance costs by 10%. Nokia’s LTE and 5G, being mobile technologies, provide more reliable support than WiMax or Wi-Fi for operating and controlling trucks and drills on the move.

Nokia’s private industrial-grade wireless solutions are enabling many new applications in the mining field, including support for environmental monitoring, video-assisted remote operations and improved worker monitoring and safety. Nokia is partnering with key solution providers in the mining industry, including Komatsu and Sandvik.

Vale is also currently operating 13 autonomous trucks on a WiMax network at its Brucutu mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil, with the intention to also replace it with a private LTE network for improved performance and reliability. Other applications being considered include an IoT application connecting dam monitoring instruments using LTE.

The advantage of LTE is its ability to adjust performance characteristics to each individual application and to provide a single mine-wide wireless platform that can support any kind of critical communication requirement.

Gustavo Vieira, CIO of Vale, said, “This new generation of wireless technology — LTE and, eventually, 5G — is enabling us to explore many new applications and use cases for remote and autonomous operations. This will help to make our mining operations more efficient, sustainable and safe for our workers.”

Alex Salgado, Vivo’s B2B Vice-President, said, “The private wireless service we are implementing at Vale’s Carajás mine is one of many deployments that we expect to see in the next few years. Forward-thinking customers such as Vale are embracing Industry 4.0 technologies, fostering digital solutions at the heart of their businesses, whether in agriculture, transportation or mining. We are excited to be leading this transformation.”

Luiz Tonisi, Head of Market Unit Brazil at Nokia, said, “Nokia is making a lot of impact in the mining sector right now, and this project with Vale is a very important beginning here in Brazil. Our industrial-grade private LTE wireless solution is ideal for supporting the industry’s embrace of autonomous technologies. It solves a lot of issues that past wireless technologies have struggled with and opens the way for many new and exciting use cases for mines of the future.”

Nokia today announced the availability of a software based upgrade that will enable its 4G/LTE radios to be migrated seamlessly to 5G/NR.

These features will have a high value to Nokia’s customers as they provide immediate support for approximately one million radios, reaching 3.1 million by the end of the year and over 5 million in 2021. By upgrading existing radio elements via software, Nokia is helping to streamline the process of refarming 4G/LTE spectrum into 5G/NR. The move will also support existing customers and the installed base by offering a seamless and cost-effective upgrade path to 5G/NR.

Most of the 5G/NR deployments to date have been performed with TDD cmWave and TDD mmWave deployment but the next big wave of 5G/NR rollouts will be delivered by refarming existing FDD bands to 5G/NR. TDD spectrum benefits from enlarged coverage and capacity when combined with already deployed FDD network infrastructure and spectrum bands via TDD/FDD Carrier Aggregation.

The ability to upgrade 4G/LTE radios via a software update will significantly smooth out the deployment of 5G/NR FDD, avoiding costly and disruptive site visits. Nokia has a vast customer base of 359 4G/LTE customers with deployed FDD RF units most of which are possible to upgrade. This will provide a new and smoother way for operators to build 5G/NR coverage in lower bands via spectrum refarming. Nokia’s 4G/LTE radios are market leading and outperform all vendors according to independent testing.

Nokia also has Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) already in live networks covering 2G/GSM-3G/WCDMA-4G/LTE and recently introduced DSS for 4G/LTE-5G/NR. This capability completes a DSS solution, covering all access technologies and making the radio frequency refarming to 5G/NR a simple and efficient process.

In a typical case DSS will be introduced to one or few 4G/LTE bands which are then combined with carrier aggregation between other bands running pure 4G/LTE or 5G/NR. Nokia has the market leading DSS solution covering all radio access technologies from 2G/GSM to 5G/NR.

Nokia estimates that this solution will save the telecommunications industry potentially tens of billions of euros in site engineering and re-visit costs as communication service providers are able to upgrade their networks to 5G/NR on FDD with software.  

Chris Nicoll, Principal Analyst at ACG Research, said, "While Open RAN promises software upgradability to ease transitions between ‘Gs’ and add new features, Nokia’s Flexi and AirScale portfolio shows it is ahead of the game by providing a software upgrade to transition over 5 million 4G radios to 5G. Efficient FDD spectrum refarming is critical for fast, broad and deep 5G deployments. With Nokia supplying the majority of the world’s top 4G operators, supporting key advanced features such as DSS helps those operators lead with 5G.”

 “We already provide market- leading LTE radios to hundreds of customers around the world. This is an important solution because it will help our customers, quickly and efficiently upgrade their existing LTE radios so that they are 5G ready saving them time and money.”

Tech titan Huawei has revealed its plans to deploy high-speed wireless internet in a number of remote, underserved communities in the North of Canada.

The Chinese tech firm has planned to deploy mainly 4G technology. This comes amid Huawei and the US’s controversial relationship. The US has imposed sanctions on the company as they have deemed the company a potential threat to their national security. Also, Canada and China are still in the midst of a diplomatic crisis concerning the detention of a Huawei executive.

Huawei has revealed that it will partner with Ice Wireless and Iristel to ensure that the rural communities will be connected by 2025. They also stated that alongside the remote areas of northeastern Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador, around 25 communities in Nunavut territory would also benefit from the deployment.

“We strongly believe that everyone should be connected to 4G LTE, no matter where they live in Canada, even in areas where high-speed service may not be economically viable,” said President of Huawei Canada, Eric Li.

Huawei officials have stated that they will deploy wireless internet in some of the coldest places on earth, which are located in Canada.

VP of Ice Wireless and Iristel, Jean-Francois Dumoulin, said, “We need to use highly reliable, world-class equipment to minimize physical intervention and to avoid outages that risk making our communities isolated once again. That’s why we partner with Huawei Canada.”

In fact, this comes as the US has been pressuring its allies to avoid using Huawei to deploy their 5G networks and have claimed that Huawei has links to the Chinese government and may partake in cyber-espionage on their behalf. However, there has been no proof of this allegation being true.

Also, Canada and Huawei have also been at odds due to the arrest of Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Neng Wanzhou, in December in Canada at the request of the US. Washington believes that she committed fraud by violating Iran sanctions and lying to US banks about it, which is why they want to put her on trial for fraud charges.

Epiroc, a leading productivity partner for the mining, infrastructure and natural resources industries, has signed a cooperation agreement with Ericsson to jointly help mining companies achieve optimal wireless connectivity in their operations through LTE and 5G technologies.

Mining companies are increasingly seeking to digitalize and automate their operations to increase productivity, enhance operator safety and lower cost. This includes, for example, remotely operating machines from a control room, and collecting machine performance data to optimize use of the equipment. This creates a need for reliable, high-performance wireless connectivity at the mines. Epiroc and Ericsson have agreed to work together to provide mining customers with high-performing LTE (Long-Term Evolution) and 5G mobile technology solutions.

Helena Hedblom, Epiroc’s Senior Executive Vice President Mining and Infrastructure, says: “We are happy to team up with Ericsson so that our mining customers can get the most reliable and high-performing wireless connectivity possible. This is a crucial step in our ongoing work to ensure mining customers reap all the benefits, including higher productivity and better safety, made possible by digitalization and automation.”

Åsa Tamsons, Ericsson’s Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Technologies & New Businesses, says: “Cellular technology and the introduction of 5G is critical to realize the full value of digitalization and automatization for smart industries. This will open up for new business models and ecosystems across the mining industry, telecom services providers in each market, and Ericsson. By combining our expertise in connectivity and Epiroc’s cutting-edge technology in mining equipment, we will be able to ensure stable and secure mining operations, leading to increased utilization, improved productivity and reduced costs.”

Key advantages of LTE and 5G solutions compared with other wireless solutions include better coverage, higher reliability and stronger security, especially when machines are in the same area and share information.  The technology, which is for both underground and open pit mines, has already been tested on Epiroc’s machines at the company’s test mine in Kvarntorp, Sweden. Further testing will be done before providing the solutions to customers. 

Nokia and Vodafone Qatar are modernizing Vodafone Qatar's core network using Nokia virtualized applications to meet growing high-quality voice and data demands of customers living in and visiting Qatar.

The modernization of the network will provide increased capacity, scalability, flexibility and performance in the delivery of services such as high-definition Voice over LTE (VoLTE) to Vodafone Qatar's more than 1.4 million mobile subscribers.
Nokia began deployment in November 2017, leveraging its hardware, NFV applications and global services expertise. The first test call was completed in March 2018 and Nokia will complete the deployment in 2019. As part of the agreement, Nokia will provide care services for five years and managed services for 20 months.

Ramy Boctor, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Qatar, said: "We are working with Nokia to deploy virtualized core network capabilities that will enable us to provide world-class services. Our aim is to deliver superior customer services leveraging this 'Telco over Cloud core' network."

Deon Geyser, head of South Africa and Vodafone (SAV) Market Unit at Nokia, said: "We are pleased to continue a long-standing relationship working with Vodafone Qatar on this Telco over cloud core modernization project. With a history of proven deployments in the field, we are able to leverage our breadth of cloud core capabilities and services expertise to deliver a network that will deliver new flexibilities in the delivery of services such as VoLTE."

Vodafone Group’s Networks Centre of Excellence team and the Huawei Mobile Innovation Centre have been testing a way to help address spectrum constraints in Turkey. The teams have completed the world’s first trial of GSM/LTE (GL) 900MHz dynamic spectrum sharing on Vodafone’s commercial networks in the Black Coast city of Trabzon.

"Spectrum is an extremely precious asset. This new network optimization technique improves spectral efficiency and enhances the experience of Vodafone customers,” said Mallik Rao, Vodafone Turkey’s Chief Technology Officer.”

Last year Vodafone and Huawei achieved overlap by GSM (2G) and LTE (4G) services within the 900 MHz spectrum band. Now the companies have shown that it is possible to assign that spectrum dynamically i.e. available 900 MHz can be allocated between 4G and 2G services based on customer demand.

In the trial, which took place over several months, dynamic sharing allowed Vodafone Turkey to provide up to 10MHz of 4G capacity and throughput in a very effective way. 4G KPIs show the improvement in network performance and better user experience. The test cases showed that download and upload throughput improved by 20 percent.

Ying Weimin, President of Huawei Wireless Network Research & Development, said: “We are glad to have tested GL 900MHz dynamic spectrum sharing on Vodafone Turkey’s commercial networks, and to have achieved satisfying performance results in the past few months. Huawei is dedicated to offering technical innovations to secure our customers' business success.”

Nokia and China Unicom are to offer Nokia Flexi Zone small cells and an AirScale low power radio head for deployment in 31 provinces in China. This will give China Unicom's subsidiaries new flexibility as they densify busy city 3G and 4G LTE networks and further enhance performance in suburban and rural locations.

“This agreement extends the long-term cooperation between China Unicom and Nokia,” said Gao Bo, head of Customer Business Team for China Unicom at Nokia Shanghai Bell. “We have developed a small cell portfolio that will allow operators to cost-efficiently densify and scale their networks, boosting 3G and 4G performance to stay ahead of demand. By combining this small cell technology with our extensive global services expertise, we can optimize any deployment for China Unicom.”

Initial small cell deployments will allow China Unicom subsidiaries to extend coverage and capacity to meet growing subscriber mobile data demands. According to China Unicom's most recent operating report, the company has seen the number of 4G subscribers on its network increase during 2017 by approximately 55 million to reach a total of over 160 million.

By deploying the Nokia Flexi Zone portfolio, China Unicom will be able to densify the network where it isn't possible to add a macro base station because of space or cost constraints. Small cells can also be used to extend coverage and capacity inside offices and homes, as well as in high-traffic locations such as train stations and shopping malls.

The ability to upgrade the small cell portfolio via software to deliver narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT) support means that the deployments will also lay the foundation for the future introduction of IoT and 5G services. Future implementation of NB-IoT will enable the connection of myriad sensors for the delivery of many smart city services, including smart transport and metering systems as well as the introduction of smart healthcare.

Nokia will leverage its extensive global services expertise to optimize small cell deployments for China Unicom, including network planning and optimization, equipment commissioning and care in warrantee services.

Saudi Arabia’s Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), in collaboration with Nokia, has successfully conducted a trial of LTE to the Home (LTTH) and implemented it using FastMile technology to enable LTE technology on a 4G network and become available on 2G networks. This comes out of Mobily’s interest to provide the best speeds for its customers with high quality.

“We have a long and fruitful relationship with Nokia, and this successful trial starts a new chapter in our association, through applying FastMile Nokia technology that will enable Mobily to extend the reach of our network in new areas. At the same time, it will allow us to use the existing infrastructure thus helping us to control our expenditure,” said Alaa Malki – CNO, Mobily.

Such contributions from Mobily are due to it being a leading company in the field of telecom and IT in Saudi Arabia, and out of its pursuit to implement the latest technologies for the benefit of its customers to enjoy high quality services in line with current and future technological developments.

“We are pleased to work with Mobily on this trial and support their plans to provide best-in-class broadband services to their subscribers,” said Tony Awad, Head of Mobily Customer Team, Nokia. “With this deployment, Mobily will be able to attract new customers who are currently unable to enjoy broadband services. Nokia FastMile will also allow them to minimize the deployment cost by utilizing the existing mobile infrastructure.”