Telia and Nokia are expanding the possibilities around innovative 5G applications

Children in Finland experienced the Christmas magic as Telia and Nokia conducted a virtual visit to Santa Claus’ workshop in Lapland. The trial by Telia and Nokia was one of the first in which 5G was used over distance for a live virtual reality experience.

The group of children from Espoo, Finland, visited Santa’s Workshop in Lapland with a live connection from the city of Rovaniemi to a test 5G network at Nokia Campus in Espoo. Santa answered the children’s questions and wishes, and they were able to experience Santa’s workshop as if they would have been there in person.

The trial showcased the capabilities of 5G to provide immersive interactive experiences that meet the expectations of the most critical target group.

5G live virtual reality experience
The trial conducted by Telia and Nokia was one of the first to use 5G in a live virtual reality experience. The Nokia OZO Live stream from Santa Claus Workshop was broadcast over the 5G network in Espoo to be experienced with virtual reality glasses.

“Thanks to 5G and virtual reality technology, the children were able to visit Santa in Lapland during his busiest days while physically present in their own neighborhood in Southern Finland. Practical use cases like this develop our understanding of the benefits of 5G. The children’s comments proved that VR is a totally natural way for them to communicate and experience the world. They thought it was fun that Santa had learned to speak VR and 5G”, says 5G Program Director Janne Koistinen, Telia Finland.

”Our cooperation with Telia on providing this live virtual reality experience over 5G is yet another great example of a real use case that 5G will enable with its astonishing improvements to network speed capacity and latency. We were thrilled to be able to help bring Santa to the children virtually just before Christmas thanks to the latest technology,” said Susanna Patja, Account Director at Nokia.

Watch the video of how it was done

5G is the next technological revolution
In June 2017, Telia and Nokia presented one of Europe’s first live virtual football experiences at Telia 5G Arena over Telia’s 4G network. In July, the companies demonstrated for the first time in Finland 4G-5G interworking at 3,5 GHz frequency.

5G is expected to improve the throughput of mobile networks by more than 20 times and the capacity up to hundred times compared to current networks.

The revolutionary aspect is the ability to connect a huge number of devices connected to the network and the possibility to enable services that require ultra-low latency and extreme reliability. 5G will enable for example autonomous driving, new concepts in e-learning and e-health and new types of critical industrial processes.