Australia’s Optus is among 10 wireless operators who have agreed to trial in the field Nokia’s AirScale base station and a prototype Qualcomm handset, and which have recently trialled so-called 5G New Radio links over 3.5- and 28-GHz bands in Nokia’s lab in Oulu, Finland.

Nokia and Qualcomm have also carried out a lab test of a 5G New Radio connection for the 10 carriers that they hope will take their systems live soon.

(5G New Radio is the global standard for a new air interface designed to support the wide variety of 5G device-types, services, deployments and spectrum.)

Field trials will be carried out this year with operators Optus, BT/EE, Deutsche Telekom, Elisa, KT, LGU+, NTT Docomo, SKT, Telia, and Vodafone. The companies hope that the trials will lead to commercial deployments of a variety of 5G services next year in China, Europe, Korea, Japan and the USA – and presumably Australia.