Cloud companies are eyeing cell services, Nokia CEO says

BARCELONA — Enterprises and cloud companies will start trying their hands at cellular this year, Nokia president and CEO Rajeev Suri predicts.

“Enhanced reality” and events such as concerts may be where cloud giants first get into mobile services, Suri said at a Nokia event here on the eve of Mobile World Congress.

“The first webscale players will enter the wireless access domain with mainstream technologies,” Suri said. Webscale usually refers to operators of big clouds, like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba. Suri didn’t name any names.

For enterprises, an emerging technique called network slicing will allow them to virtually run their own private services on mobile operator networks. Meanwhile, systems that bring LTE to unlicensed or shared frequencies, like LAA (Licensed Assisted Access), will also help open doors to private cellular networks. Nokia is already working with some energy utilities on these kinds of deployments, and at MWC it will join Qualcomm in demonstrating a private LTE network, Suri said.

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Cloud Computing

Cloud companies are eyeing cell services, Nokia CEO says