Orange and ZTE have signed a partnership to cooperate in 5G. Companies will work together on 5G and related use cases, in order to foster 5G innovation.   

U.S. Cellular and Ericsson have announced the completion of joint testing of various 5G use cases at 28GHz. The tests, a significant step toward the launch of a 5G network, were conducted in rural and suburban environments in Madison, Wisconsin.

At recently held Global Antenna Technology & Industry Forum in Munich, Huawei released its new FDD antenna and FDD/TDD converged antenna platforms. These antennas apply to full-band 4T4R and FDD/TDD convergent networking to support a 5G-oriented evolution. These new antennas will be commercially available by the second half of 2018.

5G Readiness is on the rise according to a recently released the 5G Readiness Survey 2017 from Ericsson. The report shows that many operators have accelerated preparations for the new technology and trials are being carried out by 78 percent of the respondents compared to 32 percent last year.

Singtel and Ericsson plan to jointly establish a Center of Excellence (CoE) to facilitate 5G development and deployment in Singapore. With an initial investment of 2 million Singapore Dollars over the next three years, CoE aims to spearhead the development of Singapore’s 5G mobile network infrastructure to support future Smart Nation initiatives. 

Orange Business Services has accelerated its LTE-M strategy to support the development of internet of things (IoT) solutions for the enterprise market. This follows the announcement by Orange in February 2017 that the Group would be prioritizing LTE-M across its footprint in Europe, and today it announces significant progress.

Ericsson and Intel have successfully completed the 5G 3.5GHz multi-vendor end-to-end Interoperability Developmental Test (IoDT) at a 5G field test in the Chinese capital of Beijing. The 5G technology research and development test on 3.5GHz is being led by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Nokia is to completely modernize private nationwide LTE network for Ukkoverkot, the Finnish network operator offering wireless data communications services for infrastructure operators, the industrial IoT market, public safety authorities, the maritime industry and both residents and enterprises in remote areas. 

T-Mobile, Nokia, and Qualcomm, have exceeded gigabit speeds using evolved, commercially-available 4G LTE technology. In tests at T-Mobile’s lab last week, download speeds of 1.175 Gbps were achieved on T-Mobile’s LTE network utilizing Nokia’s AirScale Base Station together with the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem. 

Ericsson has introduced a new radio product, AIR 3246, for Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (Massive MIMO), which is a complement to Ericsson’s global 5G radio offering. AIR 3246 supports both 4G/LTE and 5G NR (New Radio) technologies and is Ericsson’s first 5G NR radio for frequency division duplex (FDD). 

Ericsson and Hong Kong' SmarTone today announced successful trial of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology in a live over-the-air demonstration in Hong Kong. LAA allows the use of unlicensed spectrum in the 5GHz band in combination with licensed spectrum.

Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm achieved 1.07Gbps (gigabits per second) download speeds with commercial silicon and network infrastructure using the Qualcomm SnapdragonTMX20 LTE Modem that supports Category 18 LTE speeds, during an Ericsson lab trial.