ABI Research Coverage of

Nokia

In the past years, Nokia has redefined itself beyond consumer mobile and into enterprise segments as a supplier to telcos and in IoT services. Nokia’s device management platform is leading in innovation jointly with Huawei. Nokia excels in messaging protocol breadth and has leadership in remote configurability, as well.

Nokia implements the ReefShark design for radio, boosting beamforming capabilities and delivering the best network optimization and overall system performance. The ReefShark chipset decreases mMIMO antenna size by 50% and reduces energy usage by up to 64%. The company can increase network capacity by software upgrades without using additional spectrum. The software upgrade enables mMIMO to achieve 16 layers of MU-MIMO and deliver up to 4X the total DL cell throughput.

Nokia is one of the key advocates for Open RAN among the legacy RAN (Radio Access Network) vendors. Combing Nokia’s long history of being in the radio access network together with its established global coverage, Nokia is well informed and connected to address multi-dimensional challenges faced in RAN and Open RAN deployments. In addition, Nokia has a healthy financial status and a well-established business model, which provides it additional advantage to cater to demands from Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

Nokia is a leading innovator leveraging its full-stack product portfolio from core to RAN. The company is the first major incumbent vendor to join O-RAN ALLIANCE and one of the key contributors to O-RAN specifications, including fronthaul interface and RIC platform developments. Moreover, Nokia’s AirScale Cloud RAN solution has been architected for Open RAN, and combined with its comprehensive radio products, including massive MIMO solutions, the solution can offer CSPs and enterprise customers bespoke services with high performance.

Nokia is one of the world-leading end-to-end telecom network infrastructure providers and the first major RAN vendor to join the O-RAN ALLIANCE community and contribute to O-RAN specifications. Nokia’s AirScale Cloud RAN has been architected for Open RAN, splitting baseband into vCU and vDU, and offering CSPs real-time cloud-based processing capability to meet different connectivity needs. Its newly launched Service Enablement Platform (SEP) combines the near-RT RIC and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) on a single platform, boosting optimization through AI/ML-based closed-loop automation and supporting xApps from third party vendors.

As a Top Innovator in the Open RAN Vendor market, Nokia the first incumbent vendor to join the O-RAN Alliance, and one of the major contributors to ORAN Alliance specifications, including Fronthaul (FH) interface and RIC platform developments. Second, Nokia is among the vendors actively involved in testing and integrating Open RAN components.

Nokia ranked as a Top Implementer in ABI Research's assessment of Open RAN vendors. Nokia demonstrated a significant commitment related to the Open RAN ecosystem by successfully completing several PoCs and trials with live networks. Nokia has partnerships with all major cloud, Kubernetes providers, chipset vendors, and Tier One and Tier Two mobile operators to roll out its O3pen RAN deployments. In addition, Nokia is a member of major global organizations and Standards Development Organizations (SDOs).

ABI Research named Nokia a Top Implementer in a competitive ranking of 5G End-to-End Core Network Automation and Orchestration vendors. Nokia boasts a strong record of real-world implementations of its solution as well. In particular, Nokia boasts a comprehensive security solution, with a full suite of security applications available for operators to choose from. In terms of inter-vendor operability, the company supports multi-vendor solutions with open and standards-based APIs and is also able to manage hybrid- and multi-cloud environments.

Nokia was named a Leader in ABI Research's Open RAN Vendor Assessment. Nokia has been developing multiple products to support its Open vRAN deployments. For example, Nokia’s AirScale Cloud RAN is a step forward toward vRAN, and has been designed to introduce vertical disaggregation of baseband software with purposebuilt baseband processing hardware.