Tencent, an Internet value added service provider in China, has signed an agreement with Nokia to conduct joint research and development work to explore 5G and IoT.
Nokia and Tencent will set up a 5G test environment in Shenzhen. Tencent has 1.04 billion combined monthly active user accounts on its WeChat and QQ social media applications. Tencent aims to leverage the connectivity, speeds, capacity and reliability and lower latency enabled by 5G to enhance these services.
Finland-based Nokia said Tencent will leverage the artificial intelligence (AI) technology and automation management capabilities enabled by 5G to promote international standards and an open-source ecosystem to expand the development of new services.
The deal was announced the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Shanghai, China.
Tencent and Nokia 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, said Zeng Yu, vice president at Tencent.
Marc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said this partnership with Tencent is an important step in showing how webscale companies can leverage Nokia’s 5G Future X portfolio.
