Dive Brief:

• Nokia announced new super-fast traffic routers Wednesday, according to Reuters. The company claims the devices can manage applications such as virtual reality and other services that require much faster connections than most networks offer today. 
• The routers are based on the FP4 silicon, the fastest network chips in the world, according to Seeking Alpha. The product is intended to help deliver web-scale IT, luring internet giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook because of speed and agility, Reuters reports.
• The new products, which will ship in the fourth quarter, emerged following Nokia's acquisition of Alcatel and its IP network gear business last year.

Dive Insight:

Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and machine learning all need big capacity as well as speed. Advancements in software can only go so far without updated hardware to match in order to handle capacity without getting bogged down. 

Nokia isn’t the first company to realize the potential of such offerings. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM have also recently announced new hardware and chips that can enable data-hungry computing applications.

The core router market is currently dominated by Juniper and Cisco, but Nokia could give those two companies a run for their money. Large companies that service tens of thousands of customers and need to do so at lightening-fast transmission speeds will likely be very interested in faster routers on the market.