Nokia, HPE, NEC and Fujitsu reveal 5G enterprise solutions ahead of Mobile World Congress 2022

• Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the largest connectivity event. 
• Nokia, HPE, NEC and Fujitsu are among the big tech companies that have revealed innovations in 5G for the event. 
• The 5G Connect theme will explore what tomorrow’s world looks like with 5G and the business models shaping its growth.

Innovations in the 5G network are expected to be among the key highlights at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The world’s largest and most influential connectivity event often showcases the latest in technology for both consumers and enterprises.

Some of the participating enterprises have already started announcing their new releases. For 5G technology, innovations in 5G use cases, telco cloud, and the private network are highly likely as some of the biggest names in the industry take part in the event.

Nokia is already making its presence known at Mobile World Congress with the announcement of several new solutions in 5G. First, Nokia announced the launch of its new Intelligent RAN Operations solution designed to manage the increasing complexity of 5G networks through machine learning. The framework and its underlying products will enable mobile operators to boost the 5G network quality, efficiency, and the subscriber experience while reducing operational costs, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions.

Additionally, Nokia’s Intelligent RAN Operations implements several machine learning functionalities that help operators manage network density and complexity, and enable the automation of routine network management tasks, with a greater ability to detect, categorize and solve network issues in real-time.

CSPs to benefit most at Mobile World Congress 

Apart from that, Nokia also announced new managed services offerings to help communication service providers (CSPs) deliver a better customer experience and realize faster returns on their 5G investments by better-utilizing intelligence from their network data.

The first offering is Operations Transformation, a multi-year service with a focus on guiding CSPs to enhance productivity and agility of their operations through cloudification and automation.

The second new managed operations offering is called Operations Intelligence, which uses AI-driven analytics using massive datasets to precisely pinpoint issues, with the end goal of enabling CSPs to increase business outcomes like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and returns on their 5G investments. NPS serves as a barometer of how likely a customer would recommend a provider or service to another user.

Both services are designed to follow a CSP’s unique digital transformation journey and deliver tangible results in an outcome-based business model, giving flexibility and control. The micro-operations services catalog includes use cases ranging from coverage and capacity optimization to predictive analysis of anomalies in complex network settings to prevent the degradation of customer services and leverages Nokia AVA’s AI use case library.

“We know that customer expectations have changed so our focus with these new services is to help CSPs realize business outcomes leveraging the intelligence in their networks. The methodology can follow our customers’ unique digital transformation journey. In addition, the catalog approach is another step in our strategy towards providing a complete Software as a service (SaaS) portfolio,” said Friedrich Trawoeger, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Services at Nokia.

Scaling the Private 5G and Wi-Fi 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) will be extending enterprise connectivity with unique capabilities for private networking across both 5G and Wi-Fi enabling new enterprise and industrial applications from edge to cloud. Pre-integrated with radio access capabilities from leading vendors, the private 5G solution can be deployed quickly, flexibly, and as a service with HPE GreenLake.

As enterprises are increasingly looking at the promise of a customized 5G experience for low-latency, dedicated capacity, extended range, and security across campus and industrial environments, whilst complementing existing Wi-Fi networks. Although 5G far surpasses Wi-Fi in terms of wide-area coverage, Wi-Fi has the edge when it comes to cost-effective, indoor connectivity. HPE’s private 5G solutions have been designed to operate in tandem with Aruba Wi-Fi networks using technologies, which automates 5G and Wi-Fi roaming.

The private 5G market is developing quickly including new market entrants, such as hyper-scale cloud providers. Telecoms operators are looking for simple ways to deploy private 5G networks in order to meet growing customer expectations for the connected edge. HPE recently announced that OPTAGE, a Japanese service provider, is leveraging HPE’s private 5G solution for its Local 5G testbed implementations.

Virtualized radio access network at Mobile World Congress 

Meanwhile, Fujitsu announced that it has successfully developed new software virtualized radio access network (vRAN) technology with support for 5G Standalone (SA) and will offer it for verification by telecommunications carriers from March 2022.

By leveraging Fujitsu’s AI and quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technologies to optimize computing resources, the newly developed vRAN technology addresses one of the key challenges of conventional vRANs, delivering high-performance with low-energy consumption. Fujitsu estimates that this approach offers the potential to reduce overall system CO2 emissions by 50% or more compared to conventional base station systems by 2025 while offering users high-quality, stable communications.

Moving forward, Fujitsu plans to deploy this vRAN technology globally, offering robust and innovative support to telecommunications carriers working to reduce their carbon footprint, and ultimately contribute to the realization of a more sustainable society. Fujitsu will be sharing more about their vRAN tech at Mobile World Congress.

Empowering the automation ecosystem

Another big tech company, NEC Corporation has also launched an automation ecosystem to bolster its 5G xHaul Transformation Services, bringing CSPs simplified operations, cost-effectiveness, and faster time-to-value for their multi-vendor-based networks. The 5G xHaul Transformation Solutions and Services are part of NEC Open Networks, a suite of solutions for realizing the real-world benefits of truly open 5G networks.

For CSPs aspiring to build momentum in the 5G era, there is an imminent demand to gain network flexibility and agility to accommodate diversified user requirements. NEC’s turn-key automation services are part of 5G xHaul Transformation Services powered by an open ecosystem of industry-leading network and software suppliers, initially including Accedian, Juniper Networks, and UBiqube.

Combining the network and software engineering capabilities built at the NEC 5G Transport Network Center of Excellence (CoE) with the expertise of these strategic partners, the ecosystem is aimed at providing robust automation solutions for the full lifecycle of 5G xHaul operations, including network provisioning, traffic engineering, and closed-loop automation.

The announcements by these big tech companies are just some of the highlights from the Mobile World Congress. With several other big tech players also participating in the event, both consumers and enterprises can look forward to more solutions in the days to come.

 

---

---

---

---