Nokia and Sprint demo ‘live 5G’ 4K video streaming

Finnish networking giant Nokia has teamed up with US operator Sprint to demonstrate wireless live 4K video streaming at an event in Silicon Valley.

The event took place at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, in the Sprint experience tent. It used a live millimetre wave system running at 73GHz that supports beam steering, which supported link speeds up to 2.3 Gbps with a spectral bandwidth of 1GHz and ~1ms one way air interface latency. Sprint had previously stated it would also be conducting such a trail in partnership with Ericsson.

“We are excited that Sprint is showcasing 5G, further underscoring the U.S.’s commitment to and leadership of this important communications revolution,” said Ricky Corker, head of North America for Nokia. As a front-runner in the 5G race, Nokia is working to advance 5G end-to-end solutions globally. We’ve been a long standing partner of Sprint, and now we will work closely with them to deliver commercial ready solutions in line with their plans.”

“This demonstration of 5G capabilities is one of several steps we’re taking to bring 5G capabilities into field trials,” said John Saw, CTO at Sprint. “We look forward to leveraging our deployment experience and working closely with Nokia to expand the use of 2.5 GHz and higher band spectrum as we evolve to 5G.”

On the fixed side Nokia has helped Estonian telco Starman lay claim to being the first cable provider in Europe to commercially provide 10 Gbps residential services. Nokia’s EPON technology, which supports DOCSIS provisioning over EPON was chosen for its flexibility.

“When investing in the Internet services we bring to our customers’ home, ensuring the technology is future-proof is essential,” said Starman Group Technology Director Jaanus Erlemann. “Today we are choosing solutions that can allow for symmetrical connections greater than 1Gbps, enabling us to skip some current technological developments and take a seat on the new high-speed 10G train.”

“In addition to the business case, cable operators must consider the rapid evolution of consumer behavior, as well as the quality of the user experience,” said Federico Guillèn, President of Nokia’s Fixed Networks business group. “Starman’s choice recognizes the value of Nokia’s fiber products to support the evolution of capacity, bandwidth and services in their network.”

Elsewhere Nokia has been helping Vodacom Tanzania with its 4G roll-out, specifically the launch of 4G in Dar es Salaam recently.

“We have partnered with Nokia to roll out the fastest 4G network in Tanzania, with all sites connected to our metropolitan fiber network,” said Ian Ferrao, Vodacom TZ MD. “All major cities in Tanzania can expect to have Vodacom’s 4G network rolled out in the future and the rest of the country in due course – once spectrum becomes available, we will accelerate our roll-out plans.”

And lastly Vodacom South Africa partnered with Chinese networking giant Huawei to test what they claim is Africa’s first 1 Gbps network. The trial used Huawei’s LampSite small cell to aggregate LTE in licensed and unlicensed spectrum, i.e. LAA. The two also teamed up for another trial designed to demonstrate the peaceful coexistence of LTE and unlicensed spectrum in public areas like shopping malls.