Nokia and Qualcomm have announced the successful completion of interoperability testing in the 3.5Ghz and 28Ghz spectrum compliant with the global 3GPP 5G NR Release 15 standard. Tests utilized the commercially available Nokia AirScale base station and device prototypes from Qualcomm.

Companies are testing New Radio at Nokia's 5G center of excellence in Oulu, Finland, and expect it to provide the basis for 5G NR field trials with operators in 2018. Nokia, Qualcomm, and operators including BT/EE, Deutsche Telekom, Elisa, KT, LGU+, NTT DOCOMO, Optus, SKT, Telia and Vodafone Group are already committed to working together in verifying and trialing 5G NR technology. This will be based on the successful interoperability tests of the flexible 5G NR interface from Nokia and Qualcomm which will support a wide array of 5G services and various deployment scenarios.

Nokia and Qualcomm continue working closely to drive ecosystem for widescale 5G deployments in 2019 based on 3GPP standard-compliant 5G infrastructure and devices. This will enable timely commercial network launches in 2019, in particular in the United States, China, Japan, Korea and Europe.