Seoul, Korea - February 24, 2017 - Continuing its efforts to help foster a strong 5G ecosystem, Samsung Electronics today announced a collaboration with Nokia to ensure the vendors' respective product portfolios are aligned with 5G specifications and is part of an on-going commitment. Both companies agree that the transition to 5G, as well as its early commercial success, will be dependent in large part on the mobile industry's ability to establish strong multi-vendor-compatible solutions that address a rapidly growing number of new use cases.
Frank Weyerich, Executive Vice President of Mobile Networks Products at Nokia, said, "Collaboration between vendors is crucial for 5G to enable new business in the mobile market and other industry sectors. The joint interoperability testing between Nokia and Samsung is an important step for making 5G work across networks and devices, fostering early 5G availability and success in the market."
The two companies have been in collaboration talks since early last year and have since completed initial phases of interoperability testing. The compliance with Verizon 5GTF and Korean Telecom SIG specifications are a primary focus, and Samsung and Nokia will continue with lab testing throughout 2017.
Engineers from each company will work to ensure compatibility and performance between Samsung's 5G Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices, which provide home 5G connectivity, and Nokia's AirScale radio access. These same devices are expected to see critical deployments in markets such as the U.S. and Korea throughout 2017 and 2018, to ensure wide scale commercial 5G deployments by 2020.