Dutch developer of dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) optical components, Effect Photonics has now completed its second round of financing to accelerate the ramp of its tunable small form-factor pluggable production line and aid development of future technologies.

ADVA Optical Networking is developing a commercial device to support the Telecom Infra Project's (TIP) Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG) group.

Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica Deutschland are collaborating to speed up the expansion of their mobile communications networks, with the connection of at least 5,000 Telefónica Deutschland mobile base stations with Deutsche Telekom's fibre-optic network, long-term.

SSE Enterprise Telecoms has entered a fibre agreement with Three UK and O2 to support enhanced fibre access in London. The connectivity supplier is licensed to lay fibre optic cables throughout Thames Water’s waste water network; and the new partnership centres around the use of this fibre ring in enhancing Three UK and O2’s connectivity backhaul capabilities in order to stay ahead of an expected surge in data usage in the run up to 5G.

Ericsson is to significantly increase its minority stake in CENX after agreeing to purchase 100 per cent of the company’s shares.

Nokia has signed a €500 million loan transaction with the European Investment Bank (EIB), supported by key Investment Plan for Europe element, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). The company plans to use the funding to further accelerate the research and development of 5G technology.

VIAVI Solutions has partnered with Microsemi to enable flexible optical networking technologies to meet the demands of 5G networks, providing service providers globally with solution platforms to build, test and quickly deploy 5G-ready optical networks including OTUCn, Flexible OTN (FlexO) and Flexible Ethernet (FlexE) technologies.

ADVA Optical Networking will host a joint demonstration with BT to showcase end-to-end, multi-layer transport network slicing and assurance.

AACHEN, GERMANY – Ericsson and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT are working together to explore use-cases for 5G in the manufacturing environment, developing application scenarios for production and testing them in a real environment. 

Nokia and Qualcomm have successfully completed standard-compliant key interoperability tests in the 3.5GHz and 28GHz spectrum, using the Nokia AirScale base station and device prototypes from Qualcomm Technologies.

Following these recent tests, and the agreement in September last year that they would collaborate on 5G new radio (NR), the businesses say that widescale 5G deployments could take place in 2019. This will be timely for commercial network launches in the United States, China, Japan, Korea and Europe.