Taiwanese ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) recently announced that it will collaborate with Qualcomm on 5G NR (New Radio)-enabled small cell technology, Economic Daily News reported on August 11. This is to help boost the global commercialization of 5G small cell products and infrastructure, to be manufactured by Taiwanese OEMs/ODMs such as Zyxel and MitraStar. Under the cooperation, ITRI is able to have early access to Qualcomm's key 5G small cell technology, which will provide local companies and Taiwan some forerunner's advantage in 5G by empowering them with industry-grade quality assurance capability for communication protocol products and by providing them a live, connected testbed to test and verify products.