5G action this day: T-Mobile signs second $3.5b 5G contract with Ericsson; Nokia and Sprint demo dual-mode massive MIMO; ONF debuts cloud-native open source mobile core; Huawei tests 5G SA NR in the C-bands
T-Mobile signs second $3.5b 5G contract, this one with Ericsson
Ericsson and T-Mobile have announced a multi-year, $3.5 billion contract to support T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network deployment. Under the deal, Ericsson will provide T-Mobile with the latest 3GPP-compliant 5G NR hardware and software. The contract also encompasses Ericsson’s digital services solutions, including dynamic orchestration, BSS and Ericsson Cloud Core.
T-Mobile signed a 5G deal with Nokia for the same amount earlier this year.
The T-Mobile deal is one of several US-related 5G announcements this week from Ericsson, who is making a bigger push into the US market.
On Monday, AT&T announced that Ericsson is one of its technology suppliers for its nationwide 5G network, particularly for millimetre-wave equipment. That announcement includes plans to introduce mobile 5G in five additional cities – Houston, Jacksonville, Louisville, New Orleans, and San Antonio – this year. These new cities are in addition to seven cities previously announced – Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, and Waco.
On the same day, Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm said they had completed an end-to-end call with a smartphone form factor test device on a commercial 3GPP 5G NR network in Minneapolis.
Nokia and Sprint demo dual-mode massive MIMO
Nokia and Sprint announced they will showcase the first live demonstration in the US of a 5G NR connection over a dual mode-capable massive MIMO radio at Sprint’s booth during Mobile World Congress Americas.
The companies will use Sprint’s 2.5-GHz spectrum, Nokia’s AirScale base station and massive MIMO active antenna, and a Viavi TM500 5G test device emulator. The massive MIMO antenna can support up to 120 MHz of spectrum in 2.5 GHz, and is expected to deliver up to 3 Gbps peak downlink throughput for a single sector over 5G and LTE simultaneously. This enables Sprint to offer both 4G LTE and 5G on the same radio. Read more …
ONF debuts cloud-native open source mobile core
The ONF has announced a new CORD-based cloud-native open source mobile core platform, which it is demoing at MWC Americas this week.
Carriers see great promise in migrating to cloud-native applications to build massively scalable next-generation 5G networks. To pursue this vision, the entire CORD platform has been migrated to Kubernetes, and M-CORD has been significantly enhanced to fully containerizing the mobile core to enable automated scaling and provisioning. Read more …
Huawei tests 5G SA NR in the C-bands
Huawei says it has completed a functional C-band test of 5G SA (standalone) NR as part of the ‘third phase’ of China’s 5G technology R&D tests in Beijing organized by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group.
Huawei says the test marks the first 5G SA functional test based on the official protocol version of 5G NR following the 3GPP’s completion of the 5G NR Release15 standard (SA) in June 2018.
China’s 5G technology R&D tests have been underway since 2016 and are expected to continue through the end of 2018. The third-phase of China’s 5G technology R&D test (5G system network verification) was officially launched in February in Beijing. Read more …
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