Ahead of this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has announced a series of projects and contracts with Asia-Pacific operators.
The Finnish vendor revealed it has signed an agreement with KT to trial various 5G technologies including NFV and network slicing in South Korea.
Under the collaboration, Nokia and KT will trial an end-to-end network service platform in the country to support the key 5G feature network slicing.
The companies will also will use KT's proprietary OPERA 5G orchestrator platform and Nokia's Cloudband Management Orchestration software suite to develop a proof-of-concept to automate interworking and 5G.
Nokia separately announced that Australia's Optus has become the first operator globally to deploy its FastMile 5G indoor gateway in a live network.
Optus, which announced details of its 5G fixed wireless service in January, has contracted Nokia to launch 50 live 5G sites by March, and has now activated five locations. The company will use Nokia's FastMile 5G gateway to deliver services to consumers.
In India, Bharti Airtel has arranged to trial Nokia's multi-standard fronthaul solution as part of its efforts to transform the operator's network for the 5G era.
The converged fronthaul transport solution is designed to support 4G, 5G and enterprise services through a common platform, and supports multiple interfaces, including Common Public Radio Interfaces (CPRI) and enhanced Common Public Radio Interfaces (eCPRI).
Finally, Nokia and China Mobile have announced a successful trial involving the delivery of an AI-powered cloud VR experience over open RAN infrastructure.
Nokia was the first vendor to join the O-RAN Alliance, which was founded by China Mobile Research Institute to help set industry norms and benchmarks for 5G performance.