
Nokia to add open interfaces to its telecom equipment - finphil
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nokia-5g-idUSKBN2480S0
======
mikorym
I've been following Nokia for the past two years and watched the two
documentaries about them (they are similar; one has more Finnish). [1] [2]

My conclusions about them are this:

1\. They can become a major player in 5G for Europe.

2\. The places in Finland where they operated did not become ghost towns as
you may have thought.

3\. They are still very competent. In fact, when their mobile business was
bought out by Microsoft, it appears that they were a leader in car navigation
systems. Not sure if MS considered that when doing the takeover and not sure
whether they took it over.

4\. They have always been a telecom infrastructure player and become more so
after the 2010–2012 fiasco. They were working on Linux derived OSs for phones.
I always thought they tanked due to their marriage to Symbian and ignorance
towards Android. I am not sure anymore; I have become more old school and like
people that write their own code.

5\. The Finns seem to blame hubris for their downfall. I think even without
hubris, you can't really compete against countries with a lot of people and
low wages.

6\. Finland remains an awesome country. Their engineers are probably better
than Germans, but they are 1/10th in number. (Sorry, I like to take on the
Germans in a challenge. Maybe it's because they are actually something to take
on?)

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5654050/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5654050/)

[2]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8717008/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8717008/)

~~~
pavlov
On point 3, the car navigation systems and map data were a separate division
called Here. Microsoft wanted to buy it together with the mobile phones, but
Nokia held out for a better price, and finally sold Here in 2015 to a
consortium of Audi, Daimler and BMW for about $3B USD.

On point 6, as a Finn working in USA, I would add that the stereotypical
Finnish engineer in my mind is someone very capable who believes their job is
finding reasons to say “no” to ideas. This is a paradigmatic cultural
difference from America where most people feign enthusiasm loosely. IMHO one
of the things that holds Finland back is the belief that pessimism wins out in
the long run.

~~~
kazen44
an interesting anecdote on the pessimism aspect.

As someone from another northern european country, "pessimism" seems to be a
phenomenon that is very common in most western/northern european countries.
People are critical about radical ideas (usually for good reason imo) and
blind optimism makes you look like a fool.

~~~
jereees
I recently joined a Finnish tech company coming from a South American country.
My “blind optimism” seem to be quite refreshing for my Finn colleagues :^)

~~~
giovannibonetti
Interesting... Care to elaborate? Which type of company are you working at?
What kind of job do you do there?

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raxxorrax
Some terms are like voodoo for me as I am not familiar with telcom
infrastructure. I found this site helpful to explain the terms at least.

[https://mavenir.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-
open...](https://mavenir.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-openran-o-
ran-and-vran/)

Not yet sure what to make of it but it sounds pretty good. If we had open
standards between components, maybe we could audit proprietary modules to a
better degree.

~~~
dfox
My reading is that it is not that much about open standards between components
(which are supposed to be somewhat open and interoperable already), but about
open and vendor-neutral OAM interfaces.

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dicknuckle
5G is definitely changing the way cell networks are built although traditional
towers are still a part of this. my understanding is that traditional towers
will operate on spectrum that reaches out for miles like a traditional tower,
while the smaller towers built on lampposts and street corners will be
operating on higher bandwidth spectrum that doesn't reach as far, requiring
more small towers in densely populated areas. open RANs are the key to making
sure all the operators can use existing infra instead of overbuilding each
other. sure we'll have a ton of small 5g towers in dense areas, but imagine
how many towers would be installed if individual telecoms had to build their
own networks.

~~~
mycall
It really is becoming a public utility and should be treated as such by
government and business. The original concept for "cellular division" for
higher density bandwidth is why we call them cell towers in the first place.

~~~
frandroid
But how can we create billionaires like Carlos Slim and Naguib Sawiris in
every country without cellphone companies?

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gtirloni
Relevant: [https://www.o-ran.org](https://www.o-ran.org)

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rcarmo
This is interesting considering the direction standards/advisory bodies like
TM Forum have been heading into. The telco industry was always big on
standardisation, but paradoxically interop was a constant challenge when I was
working in 3G rollouts...

~~~
g_p
Indeed - standardisation is adopted as it helps drive more handset sales and
stimulate consumer demand. But standardisation is eschewed even in 4G and 5G
when it comes to the equipment deployment - everyone is trying to build their
"moat" of proprietary features to make you want to only deploy their radios in
a given area (or ideally the whole network).

Automatic neighbour detection and cross-eNB resource block coordination are 2
that spring to mind which I think you lose in 4G if you don't go with a
single-vendor approach. And good luck actually getting rival radio vendors to
talk X2 to each other nicely...

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kube-system
What incentive do lower cost manufacturers have to cooperate with this?

~~~
zymhan
It would allow them to spend less time designing an entire software ecosystem,
for one.

Sort of like OpenDaylight
[https://www.opendaylight.org](https://www.opendaylight.org)

~~~
kube-system
Given that wireless equipment vendors already have an existing system, I can’t
imagine that the marginal cost of maintaining it outweighs the benefits of
vendor lock-in. ... unless I'm missing something about the economics of the
situation.

Edit: I see now -- from another link in this section, it sounds like this may
be beneficial for the growth of smaller niche players who have tiny market
share.

