Partnership/ Deals

KDDI names trio of 5G suppliers

KDDI, the second largest mobile operator in Japan, selected Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung as its main 5G equipment suppliers, as it gears up to launch commercial 5G service in March 2020.

In March 2018, KDDI and Samsung completed a 5G field trial at a baseball stadium in Okinawa. They also successfully demonstrated 5G-based 4K video streaming powered at a train station in January 2019.

Cellnex Buys Arqiva’s Towers Unit for £2B

Spain’s Cellnex Telecom bought the telecoms division of UK-based towers company Arqiva for £2 billion (US$2.4 billion)

The deal involves the acquisition of around 7,400 UK sites and the right to market another 900 additional sites.

Business information

China operators notch nearly 9M 5G subscribers ahead of launch

According to the Beijing News, China Mobile has 5.32 million subscribers, China Telecom hit 1.76 million subs, and China Unicom is right in line with 1.75 million users.

5G commercial service has yet to launch in China, but the country’s three mobile operators have already signed up nearly 9 million subscribers in advance

Korea’s LG U+ selects Ericsson as a 5G RAN and 5G Core vendor

LG U+ selected Ericsson as a 5G radio access network (RAN) vendor for its 3.5 GHz Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G network

Ericsson has already been selected by LG U+ as a preferred 5G core network vendor. The new RAN deal means that Ericsson now has commercial 5G RAN contracts with all three major communication service providers in Korea.

Telia picks Ericsson for 5G in Norway, plans to deploy spectrum sharing tech

Telia Norway and Ericsson have announced a four-year 5G network deal that includes deployment of the Ericsson’s spectrum sharing technology.

Ericsson is providing 5G New Radio hardware and software from its Radio System portfolio, and was chosen as the sole radio access network (RAN) vendor for Telia’s 5G network in Norway.

Trials/ Deployment/ Roll out

France picks a first XI for 5G mmWave trials

The French comms regulator has announced details of 11 trial 5G projects that will be awarded 26GHz spectrum. The agency said it had received 15 applications for projects, with 11 getting the nod to go forward.

Nokia is named as being involved in four projects, including one at its own R&D centre at Paris-Saclay.  There are no mentions for Ericsson, Huawei, Samsung or ZTE

Chunghwa Telecom holds 5G field trial for driverless cars

(Source: Taipei Times)

Chunghwa Telecom conducted a 5G spectrum-based field trial for autonomous vehicles to demonstrate vehicle-to-infrastructure technology developed by a subsidiary.

The company focuses on the delivery of real-time information, such as traffic data to vehicles using high-speed and low-latency 5G technology

Nokia, Etisalat demo world’s first single-carrier, terabit-per-second field trial

Nokia and Etisalat claimed to trial the world’s first terabit-per-second, single-carrier data transmission over an operator-deployed fiber network.

Nokia said the trial successfully transmitted a record 50.8 terabits per second using multiple wavelengths, each with a net information rate of 1.3 terabits per second, over a 93-kilometer fiber route of Etisalat’s wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network.

Docomo Offers 1Gbit/s Services to Train Going 283km/h Using 5G

NTT DOCOMO achieved 28 GHz-band 5G mobile communications between base stations and a high-speed bullet train during experimental trials to verify further enhancement of 5G in collaboration with Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central).

The trials verified successful 5G wireless data transmissions at speeds exceeding 1.0 Gbps and consecutive handover among three base stations located along the tracks.

Zain launches commercial 5G services in Saudi Arabia

Middle East telecom group Zain has launched commercial 5G operations in Saudi Arabia.

Zain said that the first phase of its 5G rollout program stipulates the deployment of a network of 2,000 towers that cover an area of more than 20 cities across Saudi Arabia.

Nokia and Hutchison 3 complete first 5G end-to-end live network trial in Indonesia

Espoo, Finland – Nokia and Hutchison 3 Indonesia (3ID) have completed the first 5G end-to-end live network trial in Indonesia. The trial, which was conducted on a Nokia network on millimeter wave frequencies, demonstrates the 3ID network’s ability to support end-to-end 5G deployment.

Regulatory

Without Naming Huawei, E.U. Warns Against 5G Firms from ‘Hostile’ Powers

European Union report warned that “a 5G supplier from a “hostile” country could be forced by its home government to wreak havoc by causing cyberattacks”

The advisory report, drafted with input from all 28 European Union members, laid out the types of major security failures that 5G networks could be vulnerable to.

Hong Kong Set for 2020 5G Launch After $128M Auction

Hong Kong’s four operators acquired slices of the key 3.5GHz spectrum. The sale, which yielded HK$1.006 billion ($128.2 million), was the first of a three-part auction of 380MHz of 5G frequencies.

HKT acquired 40MHz of spectrum for HK$252 million ($32.1 million). SmarTone acquired 40MHz for HK$252 million ($35.1 million) and Hutchison Telecom gained 40MHz for HK$202 million. China Mobile HK was the biggest winner picking up 60MHz for HK$300 million

Business

Intel Acquires Canada’s Smart Edge For $27M To Advance 5G

Intel is acquiring the software business Smart Edge for $27 million from Pivot Technology Solutions based in Toronto

The software runs on Intel chips and speeds up computing devices by dividing data and keeping it closer to users. Intel is planning to package it into equipment for the latest 5G wireless technology that has started to roll out.

Huawei ships 400,000 5G base stations as third generation Massive MIMO arrives

Huawei announced that it had now shipped more than 400,000 5G base stations and has secured more than 60 5G contracts.

In contrast, it took Huawei five years to shift 170,000 4G base stations.