Fixed network infrastructure players know all too well the mammoth task ahead required to be heard in an increasingly wireless world, so we made sure to set aside time with at least one major vendor at MWC – sitting down with Nokia at its typically extravagant stand last week.
“There is more and more convergence between mobile and fixed networks. There are going to be 5G small cells on every street corner using existing broadband infrastructure,” explained Nokia’s VP and GM of the Broadband Access Business Unit, Geert Heyninck, alongside Head of Marketing for Fixed Networks Stefaan Vanhastel.
This same trend has brought the Broadband Forum into close contact with the mobile standards bodies, and recently it submitted proposals for 5G fixed/mobile convergence to the 3GPP.
The Finnish giant made a number of buzzword-infused announcements in the run up to the show, but the one we were eager to dive into was the major deployment at Japan’s KDDI several weeks ago – upgrading MDUs to speeds of 830 Mbps. The claim about being the world’s only vendor currently providing interoperable G.fast and VDSL technology in Japan initially incited skepticism from our part, so Nokia explained that while this was by no means the first case of G.fast technology being rolled out in Japan, the way Japanese VDSL – using an FTTB access line network architecture with different spectrum bands compared to the rest of the world – Nokia and KDDI are standing firm on having achieved a world first.
We learned that KDDI isn’t even Nokia’s first G.fast customer in Japan, having collaborated with utilities company EneCom in November 2017, providing service providers with a smooth migration from Japan-specific VDSL technology platforms to G.fast and eventually XG.fast. Nokia projects G.fast to eventually supersede VDSL architectures. But while the battle for broadband was once a fiber versus copper debate, increasingly the conflict is becoming one of fiber and copper architectures teaming up against wireless technologies – although Nokia has eggs in both baskets.
A quick browse of public reviews will tell you many consumers in Japan have voiced grumblings about VDSL falling well short of the generally advertised 100 Mbps speeds stretching back a number of years – so the Nokia deal at KDDI was clearly a long time coming.
That said, Nokia made sure to show us its newly unveiled 5G FWA device at the show, at a particularly swamped part of the stand. Admitting the FastMile 5G Gateway is a little chunky, Vanhastel assured us slimmer versions are in the works, but that hasn’t stopped Australia’s Optus placing a trial order. It claims to deliver between 10 to 25 times more bandwidth than LTE, using sub-6 GHz spectrum with mesh WiFi, a relatively new area for the vendor, telling us it has developed its own mesh architecture and won its first in-home mesh network deployment with fiber operator AIS Thailand in November, supplying its Nokia WiFi Beacon 3. Vanhastel would not comment on chipsets, however, but did note that Nokia plans to upgrade to WiFi 6 silicon in Q3, and also claimed a couple of European mesh WiFi deployments are already in the pipeline.
The case for 5G FWA in Australia is as good as any, with the mega NBN project struggling in recent years to the heady heights of scale and reach originally set out – in which Nokia is also a key supplier of G.fast technologies.
Nokia may have exited the IP video business last year by spinning off its Velocix business, but the vendor continues to highlight future video use cases in its press releases for networking products. This year’s big buzzword bet was on 5G Cloud VR gaming, based on an open RAN architecture, using AI and machine learning to manage extreme network demands.
In partnership with China Mobile, Nokia was using its edge cloud to host real-time computing capabilities, using an open API-based on the O-RAN Interface Controller A1 architecture to manage and update the machine learning trained models. Nokia says its recently launched Open Edge Server is tailored for rendering VR video in the cloud – ensuring a jitter-free experience.
Nokia’s Head of Cloud RAN Michael Clever said, “VR gaming on a mobile network combines all the ingredients that make 5G so promising. We are proud to be working closely with CMCC (China Mobile Communications Corporation) to extend the capabilities of the O-RAN architecture, which is enabling us to combine the powerful capabilities of our Open Edge Server with the 5G radio network.”