Nokia takes 5G to the edge in Brooklyn

Networking vendor Nokia is using a 5G event in New York to show off some of its latest shiny things.

The Brooklyn 5G Summit describes itself as a ‘5G technology summit hosted in Brooklyn, NY’, which seems hard to argue with. The listed contact from the event is a Nokia email address so we’re going to assume Nokia runs the whole thing unless advised otherwise, and there don’t seem to be any other vendors involved.

The big thing Nokia is looking to bring attention to this year is its Edge Cloud datacenter solution, which is inevitably being positioned as 5G-ready. Nokia has been putting a lot of effort into the datacenter side of things in recent years via its AirFrame portfolio, which looks like an increasingly wise bet as edge computing becomes ever more prominent in the telecoms world.

This announcement concerns a server specifically designed for edge computing. It puts an emphasis on open architectures and software for fast deployment (it’s OPNFV compatible), and support for ultra-low latency to support things like automation and Cloud RAN. All this stuff plays a big role in 5G so that juxtaposition seems fair enough in this case.

“The edge cloud will play an essential role in delivering the compute power required for 5G,” said Marc Rouanne, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “By expanding our AirFrame and 5G Future X portfolio we can provide a network architecture that meets the needs of any operator and their customers.

“Used with the Nokia ReefShark chipset and our real-time cloud infrastructure software, the Nokia AirFrame open edge server will deliver the right decentralization of 4G and 5G networks. We can work with operators to ensure that data center capabilities are deployed exactly where they are needed to manage demands as they expand their service offering.”

“The edge cloud is an integral part of 5G network architecture, bringing more processing capabilities closer to where data is generated and consumed,” said Dan Rodriguez, GM of the Communications Infrastructure Division at Intel. “Nokia’s new AirFrame open edge solution is built on Intel Xeon Scalable processors, which offer the needed balance of compute, I/O and memory capacity for the edge cloud to work seamlessly across the wide range of workloads deployed on the edge.”

And that’s not the only piece of 5G-related goodness Nokia has bestowed on the grateful residents of Brooklyn this week. Nokia Bell Labs has persuaded NTT DOCOMO to get involved in some demo some millimetre wave tech involving a phased-array chip solution for the 90 GHz band to increase radio coverage in higher frequency bands and deliver multi-gigabit speeds at scale.

The main point of this demo seem to be to show the viability of 5G at these very high frequencies, including the use of a large number of antennas and also show how dynamic offloading relocation in a 5G core will enable low-latency networks.

“At Bell Labs, we work with leading operators such as NTT DOCOMO to develop disruptive technologies that will redefine human existence,” said Bell Labs President Marcus Weldon. “At the Brooklyn 5G Summit, we will show the world’s first RF solution that addresses the challenge of delivering optimized coverage for future mmWave frequencies, using a pioneering RFIC design that can be scaled to any array dimension and deliver optimized connectivity to any set of devices.”

UPDATE – 17:00 3/5/18: We have been advised that the event is jointly organized with NYU Wireless.