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Nokia Takes 5G Cloud RAN Live, Works to convert vRAN Skeptics

Nokia this week boasted what the vendor in Barcelona, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray announcement, Mark Atkinson, head of
said is the world’s first commercially said the RAN has become increasingly the 5G & Small Cells Business Unit within
deployed cloud-based 5G radio access complex in the past several years, making Nokia Mobile Networks Business Group,
network (RAN), which went live in North it particularly challenging to disaggregate attributed the 5G milestone to the Nokia’s
America. Among major global RAN hardware from software in the RAN to cloud base station, “which splits traffic to
vendors, Nokia has been at the forefront achieve virtualization. While Gubbins ensure each connection gets the service it
of advocating for virtual RANs for some didn’t have specific information about needs.” Nokia’s AirScale distributed units
time, said Global Data principal analyst Nokia’s newly announced 5G cloud RAN process time-critical functions at the cell
Ed Gubbins in comments emailed to deployment, he indicated additional site close to the radios, connected by
FierceWireless. Gubbins noted Nokia’s similar moves could help the Finnish Ethernet fronthaul, while non-real-time
vRAN position forms a sharp contrast to vendor in its efforts to get operators on functions are performed fully virtualized by
others, specifically Huawei, which has board with vRAN. “The more Nokia can the centralized control unit in a centralized
publicly questioned the value proposition tout real-world operator activity like this data center, Atkinson described. “This
for vRAN. “There’s still a lot of skepticism – plus its trials with Orange last year, flexible mix of local and cloud-based
surrounding vRAN among operators and even its participation in the Rakuten processing a real game changer,” wrote
globally,” Gubbins said. “Nokia has its vRAN network in Japan – the more it may Atkinson, noting Nokia’s cloud RAN offering
work cut out for it in terms of convincing persuade operators and then benefit from supports centralized and distributed
operators to embrace this concept.” the credibility it’s earned in this area,” deployments that run Virtualized Network
Earlier this year speaking at MWC 2019 Gubbins said. In a blog post sharing the Functions (VNFs). “This means that we
can combine performance, scalability and
efficiency at its best – in the radio unit
(RU), distributed unit (DU) and centralized
unit (CU),” wrote Atkinson. Gubbins noted
that Nokia’s efforts in the vRAN space
have given the company a level of thought
leadership on the topic among major RAN
vendors, and said smaller vRAN vendors
like Altiostar and Mavenir also have a
lot of credibility. Earlier this year, analyst
Iain Gillott, founder of iGR Research, told
FierceWireless he believes there will be
scenarios where multiple vRAN vendors
coordinate, with smaller firms providing
software solutions and larger players like
Nokia and Ericsson providing network
integration and management.

Nokia Appoints Gabriela Styf Sjöman as Chief Strategy Officer and Member

of the Nokia Group Leadership Team

Nokia’s 5G “factory of the future” in Oulu, manufacturing of Nokia 4G and 5G base market, and an annual cost savings of
Finland was selected by McKinsey and the stations, the “factory of the future” in millions of euros. The Lighthouse program,
World Economic Forum as an Advanced Oulu leverages Nokia’s private (4.9G/LTE) conducted in collaboration with McKinsey,
4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) Lighthouse, wireless networks for secure and reliable includes select Lighthouse factories that
reflecting leadership and proven connectivity for all assets within and are transforming work to make it safer,
success in adopting and implementing outside the factory, IoT analytics running less repetitive, diversified and productive.
4IR technologies at scale. Leveraging on Edge cloud, and a real-time digital twin Nokia was selected as a Lighthouse by an
Nokia technologies to digitalize its own of operations data. The factory, which expert panel based on its implementation
pre-production facility demonstrates produces 1,000 4G and 5G base stations of 4IR technologies that drove financial
Nokia’s ability to digitally transform and per day, generated significant annual and operational impact in the Oulu
modernize its customers’ manufacturing improvements, including more than 30 factory. As part of the Global Lighthouse
facilities for Industry 4.0. Designed to percent productivity gains, 50 percent Network, Nokia will collaborate with other
showcase Industry 4.0 concepts for the savings in time of product delivery to world leaders to share knowledge and

35 AUGUST 2019