• Year-long European incubator for communications start-ups
• Looking at speech recognition, parental control, AI and voice-based messaging
• Partnership between Nokia, Deutsche Telkom and hub:ram
• No fee for selected start-ups, who also get to keep their own IPR

Make it so, Number One. Nokia and Deutsche Telekom have channelled their inner Star Trek love to create the WARP Future Communication programme for European start-ups. The programme aims at developing innovative communication services, with help and support from Nokia and Deutsche Telekom’s hub:ram initiative to accelerate their business plans and get to market faster.

The two partners say that the WARP Future Communication programme is designed for start-ups that can bring innovation to communication services and related areas such as speech recognition, parental control, artificial intelligence, voice-based messaging and digital life in general. They will provides the start-ups with all the tools and resources needed to develop, scale and commercialise their service from both, a technical and business perspective.

“Our business today is not just focused on meeting extraordinary technological demands, but also on how technology is deployed and used,” said Susanne Fettig, Head of Global Customer Business Team Deutsche Telekom, at Nokia. “We assist our customers in identifying compelling use cases for new revenue streams in addition to enabling the rapid on-boarding of new applications and services, scalability and operational efficiency.”

Nokia will provide the technology platform, Deutsche Telekom will offer the distribution channel and hub:raum will provide the development expertise and tools. The programme will consist of onsite meetings, remote work and a summit at the end of the year. The expectations of the program founders are that by the end of the programme, two or three start-ups will be ready for a “fast go to market”. The start-up teams selected for the programme will participate for free with no equity required and they will keep their own intellectual property.

“We believe that challenges we face every day require the setting up of cross industry partnerships which focus on co-acceleration, give access to new expertise and technology leading to new use cases being developed. Joint and open innovation together with successful industry partners can successfully leverage corporate efforts to meet customer needs and requirements much better,” said Jakub Probola, Head of hub:raum for CEE region. “This is why WARP Future Communication is so unique – it gives start-ups the opportunity to go to market fast with the support of two big corporations.”