Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC 2018) in Barcelona, Nokia and Vodafone have started a trial in Milan delivering 5G services for people in the northern Italian city, a hub for industries such as banking and fashion as well as a popular tourist destination, said a statement. Nokia said that as the technology partner of Vodafone Italy’s 5G Trial in Milan, Nokia will provide 5G network and application solutions to support the creation of a city-wide 5G test network. Nokia has started 5G network deployment and field testing activities. The first 5G site installations were completed in December and a demonstration of high-definition video over pre-standard standalone 5G was performed on a live 5G site in one of the main central locations of Milan.
This first test, performed with an experimental device provided by PRISMA Telecom Testing connected to the Nokia massive MIMO 5G solution, demonstrated how the very low latency of 5G can enhance the customer experience of video applications. As part of the 5G Trial in Milan, Vodafone and Nokia will also develop specific advanced use cases across various industries, said company.
In the trial, Nokia will employ the Nokia 5G AirScale massive MIMO antenna, which supports both 4G and 5G, AirScale baseband upgraded to support 5G, and Cloud Packet Core. Nokia will also employ its Global Services expertise including network deployment, integration and network performance optimization throughout the trial.
