Industry News

The mobile industry has confirmed that it has achieved a critical milestone in the race to bring 5G networks to life: official approval of “5G standalone” specifications. In a collective announcement, 3GPP and dozens of wireless companies are describing the approval as kicking off “the final sprint towards 5G commercialization,” which will begin in the United States this year and elsewhere next year. The newly completed specification enables developers to choose from a standalone 5G standard that doesn’t depend upon 4G, or the earlier non-standalone 5G standards with 4G ties.

Chinese telecommunications vendor ZTE has announced that it has reached a deal with the US Commerce Department over the trade sanctions that threatened to put the powerful conglomerate out of business.

Chinese telecommunications behemoth ZTE has seen its share price plummet by a whopping 39% following the resumption of its trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The Chinese vendor was able to resume trading after it reached a resolution agreement with the United States.

Chinese telecommunications vendor Huawei has vehemently denied that it collected data from Facebook users after the Silicon Valley social media colossus confirmed that it granted the Chinese smartphone manufacturer with access to user information.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has announced that it will embark on a pioneering listing program that will see them issue securities in mainland China markets on a trial basis. It’s part of the country’s overall plan to encourage and incentivize China’s top technology firms to list at home.

Toshiba has formally announced that it has finally completed the protracted sale of its prized chip unit. The Japanese conglomerate sold its memory chip business to an investment consortium for a fee of $21bn.

Nokia has successfully completed an end-to-end 5G New Radio (5G NR) data call as part of a Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) 5G Technology R&D trial. The 3GPP-compliant dual connectivity call was conducted using a 5G NR system over-the-air on the 3.5GHz frequency band and LTE in the 2.1 GHz frequency band, supported by a 5G user equipment simulator provided by PRISMA Telecom Testing

Nokia's Chinese subsidiary, Nokia Shanghai Bell (NSB), has won the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) optical transport network (OTN) project. The deployment will cover SGCC Beijing and Tianjin and will help SGCC to smoothly evolve the transport network from 10Gb/s to beyond 100Gb/s, based on Nokia's in-house innovative PSE chipset.

Huawei recently released the world's first 3GPP R14-based commercial NB-IoT solution in eRAN13.1. This latest NB-IoT solution can provide much better performance than its predecessors.

Australian operator Optus has confirmed that it will cut its workforce by 400 due to increased competition caused by a move from one of its rivals to introduce unlimited 4G data plans. The job cuts are expected to be made in the next few months - and Optus CEO Allen Lew has informed staff that the measures are being implemented in an effort to future-proof the company and fund future investment.