The stampede to acquire 5G allies continues with Telefónica Germany and Nokia agreeing to form nothing less than a 5G Innovation Cluster.

In this context a cluster seems to refer to a collection of labs that have agreed to play nice with each other. To make sure everyone knows where they stand the two companies have taken a leaf out of Huawei’s book and signed a memorandum of understanding, complete with compulsory photo of people in suits shaking hands.

“Our innovation collaboration in Germany follows a global agreement with Nokia to explore technologies on the path to 5G,” said Cayetano Carbajo, CTO of Telefónica Germany. “Having access to Nokia’s latest portfolio will enable pre-testing and understanding new technologies thus helping us to further enhance the user experience in our network.”

“This joint Innovation Cluster is a manifest of our long-standing excellent relationship,” said Marc Rouanne, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “We have a strong presence in Telefónica’s radio network in Germany and it is important that we work jointly to innovate on the path to 5G, preparing the network for future demand and business opportunities.”

Testing across Germany will focus on a lot of the RAN needs for 5G, including massive MIMO and that sort of thing. There were frequent references to 4.5G and 4.9G and, if for no other reason, 5G can’t come soon enough to put a stop all that talk. Various other boxes are expected to be ticked such as ultra-low latency and all that jazz.