Orange has announced 5G-oriented initiatives with both Nokia and Ericsson in the past week, unveiling a joint test platform in France with the former, and achieving a 10Gbps data rate in a project with the latter. The French group said it would establish “open innovation platforms” at Nokia’s and its own R&D facilities in France to define and test platforms to support 5G-based services. The focus will be on a whole laundry list of technologies which may be starting in 4G, but are seen as essential components of 5G – namely ultrafast broadband, Cloud-RAN, Massive MIMO, network slicing, new spectrum bands, energy efficiency and IoT applications. The partners said they aim to “drive the definition and development of these new…