Nokia claims new 5G speed record for a commercial network

On its home turf of Finland, in partnership with Elisa and Qualcomm, Nokia says it hit 8 Gbps by combining two devices.

It’s not clear why telecoms companies persist with this trick of inflating numbers by adding together two separate streams, other than to placate their marketing departments. If it’s a legit metric why not add even more devices? Or are they saying the peak base station output is 8 Gbps? If so, that would be much less impressive.

All the canned quotes are generic, self-serving rubbish, so we’ll spare you them. The record was set using Nokia mmWave kit using 2×800 MHz of 26 GHz spectrum and a Qualcomm test device over Elisa’s network. The release featured the usual cant about faster downloads, AR/VR and other utopian use-cases. There was, of course, no mention of the range of this record-setting beam.

Speaking of utopian use-cases, Elisa seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. It helped Helsinki University Hospital deal with the COVID-19 situation by piloting a video robot that enables clinicians to interacts with patients without having to go anywhere near them. They control it from a tablet and can remotely ask patients how they’re feeling. However, it looks like the robots are incapable of offering any further assistance should it be requested.

“The feedback from the personnel says that we have already spared many sets of protective gear and the robot has successfully performed nightly inspection rounds in corona ward,” said Helsinki University Hospital Technology Officer Pekka Kahri. “Robot is being tested and further developed in close co-operation with users, including nurses and doctors. This way we can make sure that the robot service meets the needs of a demanding hospital environment.”