Türk Telekom has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nokia to allow the vendor to use its network for real time testing of 5G radio access technology and the Internet of Things.
The companies will work together on testing technologies for tracking, metering, smart cities, smart home and latency sensitive applications. Nokia said the findings will be used to develop 5G-ready solutions that Türk Telekom can then use to improve its network.
A focus of the partnership will be developing cloud architecture for the radio and core network that can support network slicing. This would allow a network to be tailored to the different needs of various industries, which Nokia said would lead to a “large scale transformation” of the healthcare, security, automotive, public safety, industrial manufacturing and smart cities sectors.
Nokia is currently working on rolling out Türk Telekom’s LTE-Advanced network. LTE was launched at the beginning of April after a protracted spectrum rollout by the Turkish government.
Rami Aslan, CEO at Türk Telekom, said: “We intend to be a pioneer in the deployment of technologies that differentiate our customer services. Working with Nokia, we have already launched 4G LTE-Advanced in Turkey, and the development of 5G technology will allow us to drive digital revolution, changing the way of life for our customers and growing the economy.”
Ernst Nassl, Head of customer business team Turkey and Central Asia at Nokia, said: “By signing the agreement with Türk Telekom to develop 5G and IoT technologies, we are taking an important step towards defining the future of mobile networks. Our work with customers on 5G is crucial in allowing us to better understand real network use-cases for this technology and to accelerate commercial use.”