M1, Nokia to launch 5G small cell trial across Singapore

Singaporean mobile carrier M1 and leading global telecommunications specialist Nokia have announced plans to conduct Nokia’s first 5G small cell trial in Southeast Asia.

The latest agreement expands the existing partnership between M1 and Nokia that saw the two launch Southeast Asia’s first nationwide NB-IoT network, supporting Singapore’s wider national transformation.

See also:

• HCL Technologies, Nokia sign global IT partnership

• SAP named the best IoT employer

• AT&T to launch NB-IoT network in US, Mexico in 2019

“We are thrilled to continue to partner with M1 to conduct a 5G trial, including Nokia’s Southeast Asia’s first 5G small cell trial in 4Q-2018,” said Mark Atkinson, Head of Small Cell, Nokia.

“This is a great opportunity for us to leverage the learnings from the trial to develop the next generation 5G small cells architecture and shape the future products and technology, which will benefit the entire industry.”

The two firms will now utilise the 4.5G narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) heterogenous (HetNet) network in Singapore, deployed using Nokia’s Flexi Zone WiFi equipment, for these latest tests.

This experimentation will then inform the firms as how best to commercially launch 5G small cells, whilst also testing low-latency 5G IoT use cases.

“With M1’s NB-IoT network and largest HetNet deployment nationwide today, we are well positioned to harness exciting new 5G capabilities and support extremely reliable and highly responsive advanced network infrastructure on our dense cell grid architecture,” said Denis Seek, Chief Technical Officer, M1.