At the Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Nokia & Tencent, one of China’s leading providers of Internet services, have signed an agreement to carry out joint research and development work to explore the potential of 5G for the provision of new applications, including those for a variety of vertical markets.Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the companies at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the 2 companies will establish an end-to-end 5G test environment in Shenzhen. With 1.04 billion combined monthly active user accounts of its WeChat and QQ social media applications, Tencent aims to leverage the massive connectivity, increased speeds, capacity and reliability and lower latency enabled by 5G to enhance these services, said a press statement.
Going forward, Nokia and Tencent will leverage the Artificial Intelligence and automation management capabilities enabled by 5G to promote international standards and an open-source ecosystem to expand the development of new services. The companies will conduct 5G applications research using technologies such as Edge Computing to benefit a number of vertical markets, including transportation, finance, energy, intelligent manufacturing and entertainment. This will potentially open up the widespread introduction of applications such as Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) and enhance the delivery of services such as Cloud-based gaming and entertainment.
Key elements of the agreement:
- Establishes a joint laboratory equipped with leading 5G technologies, products and solutions, including centralized and decentralized split architecture using Nokia Airscale Radio Access Network, 5G Core, MEC framework and third party devices.
- Leverages the capabilities of an end-to-end 5G testing environment. Nokia and Tencent will conduct verification on service key performance indicators and develop new 5G and IoT use cases.