NTT and Fujitsu hook up to look beyond 5G
Japanese electronics giants NTT and Fujitsu have struck an alliance to develop technology and standards promoting multivendor interoperability in the mobile and optical transport fields.
The partners have stated they will conduct joint research and development activities toward a variety of “energy efficient, sustainable technologies” in areas including open architecture optical transport and mobile communications, combined with disaggregated high performance computing. This will become possible through photonics/electronics convergence in devices, according to the companies.
“In order to promote more open mobile networks in anticipation of the Beyond 5G era, the two companies will study the development and promotion of open interface-based technologies, as well as the development of global businesses based on the results of these activities,” the partners said in a release. “The first step is to develop technologies that can be established globally with a variety of partners through avenues including the ‘5G Open RAN Ecosystem’ launched by NTT Docomo.”
Taiwan Mobile passes 50% coverage
Taiwan Mobile’s 5G network now reaches 50% of the country’s population, according to the operator, claiming to have built over 6,000 5G 3.5 GHz cell towers by the end of 2020.
The carrier, which is the country’s number two operator behind Chunghwa Telecom, now has over 600,000 5G subscribers within this footprint, while working with South Korean telco SK Telecom to remedy technical deficiencies that impede 5G coverage, particularly indoors.
Qualcomm beats Q2 expectations
Qualcomm shares soared by 6% after comfortably beating analyst expectations in its Q2 2021 results, with revenues up 52% on an annualized basis at $7.93bn against predictions of $7.62bn. Earnings at $1.90 per share also beat analyst expectations of $1.67.
The caveat is that revenue growth was elevated by comparison with a poor quarter a year ago when phone demand was temporarily depressed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic. However, revenues were also boosted by stronger than expected handset shipments in China.
Nokia claims two more private cellular mining scalps in Russia and Chile
Nokia has added to a recent spate of private cellular contracts in the mining sector with one each in Russia and Chile. The Finnish company has picked up Russian palladium and nickel mining company Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) and Chilean copper mining company Codelco.
These follow the deal announced last week with South Africa-based mining company Gold Fields to deploy private LTE with América Móvil, also in Chile at the Salares Norte mine. This brings the total of mines Nokia claims to have equipped with private wireless to well over 40, among 260-odd enterprise customers in total.