Telecoms.com

Finnish kit giant Nokia has announced a suite of services designed to smooth the path to 5G for operators and help them make money out of it.

Presumably antagonised by Ericsson being the first to jump the gun when it comes to launching 5G-branded gear, Nokia wasted little time in assembling Nokia 5G Acceleration Services which, according to the announcement, “will help operators develop a plan for their business, network and operational transformation to prepare them for the 5G programmable world.”

As the same implies this is a bundle of services given the 5G tag, which Nokia describes as follows:

• Building a solid business case using:
  • Collaborative customer workshops to help operators define a phased strategy for transformation and the implications on their business, technology, and operations.
  • A techno-economic analysis using scenarios that meet the operators’ goals for 5G to optimize network evolution investment
  • A 5G spectrum assessment, allowing operators to optimize spectrum resources to deliver the capacity needed to realize their 5G goals
• Planning a staged architecture and operational evolution using:
  • Technology workshops to provide an in-depth view of the impact of 5G technology on network architecture, end-to-end network planning and deployment and how it can be applied to meet business objectives
  • Goal-driven 5G radio access network design to meet the performance and traffic demands of chosen scenarios

• Building a solid foundation to 5G by allowing operators to leverage Nokia’s extensive services expertise to help them ramp-up their network, organization and business capabilities and become 5G-ready.

“Operators can already begin to plan their path to 5G, building the foundation of the programmable world with cloud-based technologies,” said Igor Leprince, head of Global Services at Nokia. “Working in a consultative mode Nokia 5G Acceleration Services can minimize the complexity of this transformation, creating a plan that will allow operators to migrate optimally to 5G to capitalize on new business opportunities.

“We are already working with our customers on 5G co-development agreements, and by leveraging our transformation services and Bell Labs Consulting expertise we can help operators build a solid business case for their 5G transformation.”

Nokia likes to make its announcements in clusters and it seems to be in the middle of one of those frenzies right now. Leaving aside personnel matters, the company recently announced AirScale-powered 4.5G Pro and 4.9G that, you guessed it, smooth the path to 5G. In addition Nokia announced it is collaborating with Tele2 Russia over 5G and that it’s going to focus all this road-to-5G stuff at the impending CTIA event. How do you like them apples Ericsson?