Nokia And Tencent Team Up For Research On 5G

Nokia and Tencent, one of China’s leading providers of internet services, announced Thursday (July 5) that they inked an agreement to carry out joint research and development work to explore the potential of 5G for new applications. In a press release, the companies said the deal was made at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai. Under the terms, Nokia and Tencent will create an end-to-end 5G test environment in Shenzhen.

Tencent, which has 1.04 billion combined monthly active users on its WeChat and QQ platforms, aims to capitalize on the connectivity, increased speeds, capacity and reliability that 5G services will bring. The two companies said they would leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and automation enabled by 5G to promote international standards and an open source ecosystem to expand the development of new services. The companies said 5G services can benefit a number of markets, including transportation, finance, energy, intelligent manufacturing and entertainment.

Under the partnership, Nokia and Tencent will establish a joint lab, equipped with 5G technologies, products and services.

Vice President of Tencent Zeng Yu said, “We are pleased to collaborate with Nokia to leverage the technologies, products and expertise of both our companies to fulfill the growing demands of a digital economy driven by 5G. Tencent and Nokia are fully committed to delivering richer, more diverse, multi-level services and applications for enterprises and individual customers. Furthermore, we will support each other in creating more financial and social benefits in our respective fields to pursue success in the new era of digital economy.”

Meanwhile, Marc Rouanne, president of mobile networks at Nokia, said the partnership “is an important step in showing companies around the globe how they can [use] Nokia’s 5G Future X portfolio. Working with them, we can deliver a network that will allow them to extend their service offer to deliver myriad applications and services, with the high-reliability and availability to support ever-growing and changing customer demands.”