Nokia extends its WING offering with IoT and Edge Applications

Nokia improved its Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) with the edge and 5G capabilities.

The company revealed that the upgrade is aimed at operators that want to provide 5G IoT capabilities without having to invest in the global infrastructure.

Cellular operators from all across the globe can use the Nokia WING lab to begin testing 5G IoT use cases. The company is also actively working with operators that have a large customer base and need to address increasing needs for secure IoT use cases across the globe.

Executive Opinion

Head of Nokia WING Business at Nokia, Ankur Bhan, said, "The innovative Nokia WING infrastructure offers superior IoT service experience through global network presence, unified orchestration and consistent service level agreements to operators’ enterprise customers. We have now upgraded WING’s global architecture to 5G to further help operators to monetize IoT opportunities faster and cost-effectively in the 5G era. We are actively working with operators, who have a global enterprise customer base and need to address their increasing needs for secure, low-latency IoT use cases across geographical borders."

Vice President, Applied Infrastructure & DevOps Channel at 451 Research, Brian Partridge, said, "5G holds great promise but the cost and complexity of building a dedicated, global 5G infrastructure to support IoT services is a major obstacle for CSPs. The features and performance of 5G can help digitally transform industries like transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing over the next several years and CSPs are eager to establish new value chain positions in these markets. We expect such managed services that demonstrate success in accelerating the ‘time-to-value’ or de-risking 5G investment for both enterprises and CSPs will generate strong demand."

Nokia's 5G and IoT services

WING ensures ultra-low latency. The user plane functions can be separated and extended to the edge of the network or to the enterprise premises, notes the announcement.

The distributed WING infrastructure can be enhanced with the MEC (Multi-Access Edge Computing) technology, improving the ability to support compute-intensive IoT services such as the AR or VR maintenance and cellar vehicle to everything use cases.
Nokia revealed the WING in 2017 as a way to kick start the IoT market, which gives it a traditional service provider customers and enterprises a one-stop-shop for all their IoT needs.

In 2019, the company revealed four packages that is designed to simplify the setup and operations of enterprise IoT services covering smart agriculture, asset management, logistics, and livestock management.