Stories by Stephen Lawson

In Barcelona on Sunday, Nokia licensee HMD Global launched a (slightly) modernized version of the Nokia 3310, a rugged, beloved feature phone first introduced in 2000.

Enterprises and cloud companies will start trying their hands at cellular this year, Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri predicts. “Enhanced reality” and events such as concerts may be where cloud giants first get into mobile services, Suri said at a Nokia event in Barcelona on the eve of Mobile World Congress.

On Sunday, many of the world’s biggest equipment vendors and mobile operators joined hands to accelerate the 5G NR (New Radio) specification that will define many elements of 5G.

The global partnership announced Wednesday between Telefonica and IoT specialist Sigfox could ensure the latter’s long-term success while accelerating the overall growth of LPWANs (low-power, wide-area networks).

Broadcom will unload the Ruckus Wireless Wi-Fi business for US$800 million after it takes over Brocade Communications Systems later this year.

Verizon said Wednesday it will launch pre-commercial 5G service in 11 markets around the U.S. by the middle of this year, joining rival AT&T in aggressively deploying the future technology.

One of the many whiz-bang features promised in 5G is a new way of connecting millions of small, low-powered IoT devices. But there's no need to wait: Two forms of LTE tuned for IoT have entered a market that's already heating up with rapidly expanding specialist networks.

Intel is launching a program to provide IoT device boards that have been pre-certified by mobile operators.

The Swedish network giant Ericsson will have a lot of prospective 5G equipment to show to gearheads at Mobile World Congress later this month, but the future cloud capabilities it demonstrates may be just as important for a subscriber’s experience.

AT&T is accelerating its rollout of LTE-M, an IoT network that’s being used to track shipping containers and pallets, monitor water use and connect fleets to the internet.

Qualcomm will start shipping sample chips for the next generation of Wi-Fi by June, helping device and network vendors develop products that might quadruple users’ speeds and lengthen battery life.

At Mobile World Congress later this month, Nokia will show off what it calls WING (worldwide IoT network grid), a virtual global infrastructure that may include multiple carrier networks and satellite systems

Inmarsat says it’s built the first global IoT network by combining land-based low-power networks with its mesh of communications satellites, bringing data connections to things like cattle in Australia and reservoirs in Malaysia.

Some big players in security and the internet of things, including AT&T and Nokia, are joining forces to solve problems that they say make IoT vulnerable in many areas.

There will be 8.4 billion IoT devices in use at the end of 2017, up 31 percent from the end of 2016, Gartner estimated on Tuesday.