Nokia Opened Future X Lab in Finland

Nokia has opened a 5G Future X Lab at its global headquarters in Espoo, Finland. The Lab will enable communications service providers, enterprises and infrastructure providers to learn and understand the techno-economic power of a 5G end-to-end network to better serve their customers and unleash new value.

The Lab will showcase Nokia’s 5G end-to-end capabilities with live hardware, software and full network slicing, all under seamless digital operations control. The Lab will also include an “Experience Zone“ where customers will see demonstrations of Nokia technologies and innovations. In addition to serving 5G customers, the Espoo Lab will also provide an innovation platform for internal research, prototype development and testing, as well as enable engagement with the wider research and innovation ecosystem.

“The Future X Lab is an extensive build-out of a 5G end-to-end network, enabling customers to explore how a dynamically reconfigurable and automated network can increase network performance in areas of latency, capacity, reliability and security while reducing total cost of ownership. This new facility is an extension of our Lab in the U.S., and will enable us to better serve European customers and innovate with key industrial verticals,“ said Marcus Weldon, Nokia’s Corporate CTO and President of Nokia Bell Labs.

Nokia last year outlined its Future X network architecture for 5G, which includes products such as high-capacity 5G New Radio, core and SDN-controlled 'Anyhaul' transport, becoming the only 5G vendor with a truly end-to-end portfolio available globally. More than half of Nokia’s 48 commercial 5G contracts include more than radio access from the end-to-end portfolio. According to a study from Nokia Bell Labs Consulting, a 5G end-to-end network with an integrated solution from a single prime vendor can reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by more than 20 percent and decrease time to market by at least 30 percent, compared to multi-vendor solutions.

The Future X Lab in Espoo is a live end-to-end network and application lab for the 5G era where visitors can see real consumer, enterprise and industrial scenarios unfold in a myriad of simulated and physical environments, all orchestrated on a single network managing individual network slices. Visitors will be able to compare the performance of a Nokia end-to-end 5G network against existing networks, clearly demonstrating the advantages of the Future X network architecture in key performance and economic metrics such as latency, reliability, availability, security and TCO.