BT Pick Nokia ReefShark Chipset to Fuel Future 5G UK Mobile Network

Telecoms operator BT has said that they expect “huge network performance improvements” after choosing to adopt Nokia’s new ReefShark chipsets into EE’s UK mobile network, which they hope will enable their network to “unleash the full potential” of future 5G technology.

The new chipsets claim to reduce power consumption in baseband units by 64% and decrease massive MIMO antenna size by half. On top of that ReefShark chipsets for compute capacity are delivered as plug-in units for the commercially available Nokia AirScale baseband module, which are software upgradeable to support 5G and could triple throughput from 28Gbps today to 84Gbps (per module) or 6Tbps via module chaining.

Neil McRae, BT Chief Architect, said:

“By incorporating ReefShark into our network we will leverage the huge network performance improvements that will allow us to unleash the full potential of 5G.”

At present Nokia claims to be working with 30 operators. Indeed they’ve been collaborating with BT on 5G technology research and trials since 2016 (here), which means that today’s announcement won’t come as too much of a surprise. The new chipsets, which will also benefit existing 4G (LTE) networks, are expected to begin shipping in volume during Q3 2018.