Nokia and Tencent, one of China's leading providers of Internet services, have signed an agreement to carry out joint research and development work to explore the potential of 5G for the provision of new applications.
The companies will establish an end-to-end 5G test environment in Shenzhen. With 1.04 billion combined monthly active user accounts of its WeChat and QQ social media applications, Tencent aims to leverage the massive connectivity, increased speeds, capacity and reliability and lower latency enabled by 5G to enhance these services.
Going forward, Nokia and Tencent will leverage the artificial intelligence and automation management capabilities enabled by 5G to promote international standards and an open-source ecosystem to expand the development of new services. The companies will conduct 5G applications research using technologies such as Edge Computing to benefit a number of vertical markets, including transportation, finance, energy, intelligent manufacturing and entertainment. This will potentially open up the widespread introduction of applications such as Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) and enhance the delivery of services such as cloud-based gaming and entertainment.
Zeng Yu, Vice President at Tencent, said that the collaboration would “leverage the technologies, products and expertise of both our companies to fufill the growing demands of a digital economy driven by 5G.”
Marc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: "Working with [Tencent] we can deliver a network that will allow them to extend their service offer to deliver myriad applications and services with the high-reliability and availability to support ever-growing and changing customer demands."
