(Telecompaper) Telecom Italia (TIM) has teamed up with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies to conduct the first live trial of its network using a 5G prototype smartphone. The pilot was conducted at TIM's Turin lab, with the operator claiming the first use in Italy of a smartphone equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G chipset, set to be included in 5G-compatible handsets to be launched next year. The OTA (Over the Air) connection trials also used Ericsson equipment compliant with the 3GPP 5G NR (New Radio) Release 15 specifications as well as Massive MIMO technology.