Eurobites: Ericsson and Elisa up the ante on the 5G SA uplink

Ericsson has teamed up with Finland's Elisa and US chipmaker Qualcomm to demonstrate high uplink speeds on a commercial 5G standalone (SA) network. The three partners, says Ericsson, achieved an upload speed of 230 Mbit/s on a live 5G network using a technique called uplink carrier aggregation. For this test, a 25MHz 2.6 Hz FDD (frequency division duplex) band was combined with a 100MHz 3.5GHz TDD (time division duplex) band running on a mobile test device powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System. Ericsson believes uplink-heavy applications such as live streaming and cloud gaming will greatly benefit from this new approach.

Ericsson and Qualcomm have also been busying themselves with BT, conducting a 5G SA network slicing trial at the UK operator's Adastral Park facility. The trial, says BT, established network slices specifically aimed at gaming, enterprise and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) applications, and showed how, by allocating a portion of the network to provide "dynamic partitions" for specific use-cases, optimal performance can be maintained for bandwidth-guzzling activities such as mobile gaming and videoconferencing, even during peak times. For the purposes of the trial, the companies initiated a gaming session on Fortnite using the Samsung S23 Ultra handset.

Nokia has added five new third-party applications to its MX Industrial Edge platform for use cases such as asset tracking and indoor navigation. The applications include the HERE HD GNSS service, which provides accurate outdoor location tracking for machinery and people at industrial sites, and Secapp, a platform intended to improved the safety of lone workers.

Telecom Italia's board of directors has mandated its CEO, Pietro Labriola, to seek a better offer from Italy's Ministry of Finance for Sparkle, its on-the-slab international services arm. In a statement, the board dismissed the ministry's offer as "unsatisfactory." (See Telecom Italia is how other telcos fear they may one day look.)

Swisscom's Italian unit, Fastweb, once again outshone its stablemates in 2023, increasing its full-year revenue by 6.1% year-over-year, to €2.63 billion (US$2.83 billion). Domestically, things were not as pretty, with overall revenue falling by 63 million Swiss francs ($72.05 million), although its business IT services unit saw revenue rise 2.8%, to CHF32 million ($36.6 million). Looking ahead, Swisscom expects revenue of around CHF11 billion ($12.58 billion) and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of CHF4.5-4.6 billion ($5.15-5.26 billion) for the 2024 financial year.

 Tele2 has launched an updated sustainability strategy, setting itself new targets to 2026 in its four focus areas, namely: circular economy; online child protection; sustainability through tech; and diversity. The new targets include the collection and recycling or reuse of 100,000 mobile phones by 2026.