Nokia opens Future X Lab to showcase end-to-end 5G

(Image credit: Nokia)

Nokia has opened a customer experience and research facility in Finland as it seeks to reinforce its message that only it can offer end-to-end 5G infrastructure.

The Future X Lab in Espoo has a live 5G network powered by Nokia’s radio, core and transport technologies and features full network slicing. Customers will be able to see demonstrations of  consumer, enterprise and industrial scenarios in physical and simulated environments.

Nokia is competing with the likes of Ericsson and Huawei to supply mobile operators with 5G radio kit, while Cisco is a major player in core technology. Samsung too, is increasing its influence in the market.

Nokia Future X Labs

The end-to-end capabilities of Nokia’s product portfolio are seen as a key differentiator, and it is hoped the Future X Lab will allow will allow prospective customers to see the benefits of procuring equipment, software and services from a single vendor.

Nokia such an approach can reduce total cost of ownership by more than 20 per cent and reduce time to market by at least 30 per cent when compared to a multi-vendor strategy.

The lab isn’t just for show however, with Nokia also housing an innovation platform for research, product development and testing that also allows it to interact with other members of the 5G ecosystem.

“The Future X Lab is an extensive build-out of a 5G end-to-end network, enabling customers to explore how a dynamically reconfigurable and automated network can increase network performance in areas of latency, capacity, reliability and security while reducing total cost of ownership,” declared Marcus Weldon, Nokia CTO and President of Nokia Bell Labs.

“We look forward to hosting customers from around the world at either Lab to experience network slicing and learn firsthand how our 5G end-to-end network architecture will help them create new economic value.”

Steve McCaskill is TechRadar Pro's resident mobile industry expert, covering all aspects of the UK and global news, from operators to service providers and everything in between. He is a former editor of Silicon UK and journalist with over a decade's experience in the technology industry, writing about technology, in particular, telecoms, mobile and sports tech, sports, video games and media.