In other network evolution news, Telxius and Ciena have announced a collaboration to power two transatlantic submarine cables, Marea and Dunant. Thales and Ericsson are partnering with EDF to bring mobile broadband connectivity to all of EDF’s nuclear energy sites in France—those in production and under deconstruction. NEC and Cisco announced that they will work together under a new agreement that expands their existing partnership to accelerate the deployment of innovative 5G IP transport network solutions worldwide.

In satellite news, Northrop Grumman and the company’s wholly owned subsidiary SpaceLogistics LLC have successfully completed the docking of the Mission Extension Vehicle-2 to the Intelsat 10-02 commercial communications satellite to deliver life-extension services. This is only the second time the company has docked two satellites in orbit.

Netcracker Technology and global satellite operator Telesat announced that Netcracker has been selected to implement its cloud-native digital BSS/OSS software suite for Telesat’s latest technology offering, Telesat Lightspeed. This will help Telesat advance innovation in its LEO (low-earth orbit) satellite network. In other news, Gilat Satellite Networks has been tapped for $20 million in orders for new gateways for LEO satellite constellations.

5G News

5G news this month brimmed with innovation. Working to demonstrate the potential of 5G, Nokia and Optus announced that they achieved a record-breaking aggregate site throughput of 10 Gbps during a downlink speed demonstration at a live 5G site in Brisbane.

In Singapore, Singtel launched GENIE, the first portable 5G platform in the world to enable enterprises to bring 5G’s capabilities and trial use cases in their own premises without prior installation of equipment or a network. It can be leveraged to create temporary 5G networks.

Pushing to expand US 5G coverage, Nokia announced an agreement with LG Uplus to install new Nokia AirScale equipment across the country to enable seamless 5G indoor and outdoor connectivity. Verizon is speeding up deployment of its 5G Ultra Wideband and fixed wireless broadband service on its recently acquired C-band spectrum—secured in the recent FCC auction—with the installation of C-band equipment from Ericsson and Samsung. Verizon also inked deals with Crown Castle and SBA to speed deployment of C-band equipment for this newly acquired spectrum.

Globally, BT has expanded its 5G network across the United Kingdom as lockdowns start to lift. In Asia, Nokia announced that it has been chosen by Chunghwa Telecom to expand the operator’s 5G network in Taiwan.

IoT and Connectivity News

Developments in Industrial IoT made headlines this month. Enea announced that it has launched the new Enea 5G MicroCore, built for enterprises using private 5G networks to support smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 initiatives. T-Systems and GFT are collaborating on the Industrial Internet of Things to offer the manufacturing industry solutions for analyzing big data for machines, production and planning.

To further advance IoT innovation, Telekom is making preactivated SIM cards available later this year to startups, newcomers, and small companies that want to create their own IoT environment. The program debuts in September with a maximum of 10 preactivated SIM cards per customer.

In Europe, Atos announced its role in coordinating and actively contributing to the European robotic agriculture project “FlexiGroBots.” This initiative aims to empower robot-makers, engineers and service providers to build and deploy multi-robot systems for the agri-food industry to support farmers in their daily work.

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