Vodafone technician activates 5G antenna. (Picture: Vodafone)

At the end of 2019, Nokia had just announced a long-term partnership with the Australian company Vodafone Hutchison, followed by further announcements, less than ten days later. With this, the Finns want to take position as world market leader in the delivery of end-to-end 5G solutions.

The year was not yet a week old when Nokia made the announcemend that it had reached 63 commercial 5G contracts worldwide, aiming to be counted as global leader in the delivery of end-to-end 5G solutions. And indeed, the figure includes customers such as AT&T, KDDI, Korea Telecom, LG Uplus, NTT DOCOMO, O2, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Sprint, STC, T-Mobile US, Verizon, Vodafone Italy and Zain Saudi from key 5G early adopter and progressive markets.

“This milestone highlights the quality and customer confidence in our 5G portfolio and we expect this to continue this year with the addition of many more new deals,” said Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “Our global end-to-end portfolio includes products and services for every part of a network, which are helping network operators to enable key 5G capabilities such as network slicing, distributed cloud and the industrial Internet of Things. We are delighted that our technologies are helping to shape the delivery and deployment of 5G technologies worldwide and the myriad benefits these will bring to businesses and consumers alike.”

“5G will bring myriad benefits to business”
Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia

The 63 signed commercial contracts exclude any other type of 5G agreements, such as paid network trials, pilots or demonstrations. If such agreements were to be included, the total number of 5G agreements would reach over 100, a company announcement said. Nokia is also a vendor for almost all of the leading early adopter 5G markets. This includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US and Verizon in the US; Korea Telecom, LG Uplus and SK Telecom in South Korea; NTT DOCOMO, KDDI and SoftBank in Japan; Vodafone in Italy; O2 in the UK, Optus and Vodafone Hutchison in Australia; Elisa and Telia in Finland and du in the UAE and STC and Zain in Saudi Arabia.

5G network around the world

“Nokia is the only network supplier whose 5G technology has been contracted by all four nationwide operators in the US, all three operators in South Korea and all three nationwide operators in Japan”, Uitto said. “We have more than 350 customers in 4G, but these first 63 customers represent some two thirds of our global Radio Access Networks business in a typical year. Further, these 63 contracts  –  across the most important pioneering markets, across low bands, middle bands and high bands, and across traditional and cloud network architectures – provide us with invaluable early experiences and insights for the benefit of the rest of the world. So, it is a great start”, he continued.

Nokia is the only vendor with a globally available end-to-end product portfolio that covers all 5G network elements, including radio, core, cloud and transport as well as management, automation and security. This offers operators and enterprise customers with a simple and efficient step-wise upgrade to existing radio access, core and transport domains which helps customers to a faster path to 5G. Approximately 60% of Nokia’s 5G customers select more than just New Radio from its end-to-end portfolio.

This news in 5G is accompanied by the company’s activities in cellular technology R&D and standardization. Nokia declared more than 2 000 5G patent families as essential for 5G, a year after making its first declarations for the standard. Expertes from Nokia and Nokia Bell Labs are working with 3GPP to establish 5G standards and enabling the rollout of 5G networks. It is now contributing towards the next set of standards, Release 16.

Vodafone Hutchinson to roll out 5G technology in Australia

After partnering with Nokia Australian telecommunications company Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) to commence the roll out of its 5G network in the first half of 2020. Vodafone’s Chief Executive Officer, Iñaki Berroeta, said the new partnership paved the way for VHA to deliver 5G to its customers. “We have worked with Nokia for several years across different elements of our network. They presented a compelling roadmap that aligned with our 5G objectives and will help us to continue improving our 4G network for our customers.

The partnership with Nokia has also enabled Vodafone to fast track its 5G delivery and to switch on its first group of 5G sites in and around Paramatta in the coming months. The sites originally made up a test network which Nokia used to demonstrate its technology but are now set to become the first area of commercial coverage for Vodafone’s 5G network and will soon be available to Vodafone customers with a compatible 5G device.

Federico Guillén, President, Customer Operations EMEA & APAC at Nokia, said: “We started our 5G journey with Vodafone in 2016 and are now moving from trials to reality. Nokia’s end-to-end portfolio has a key role to play here, with this deal including 5G radio access network (RAN), IP/Optical, Microwave, deployment and managed services, as well as software.” The agreement between Vodafone and Nokia is for a term of at least 5 years and enables Vodafone to place orders with Nokia for site delivery, thus allowing Vodafone to scale up or down the pace of its 5G rollout according to its requirements.

Nokia presented an advanced 5G Roadmap that will enable 5G for Vodafone in all the spectrum bands currently in use for 4G, and implementation of new generation 5G Massive MIMO antennas, delivering substantially increased gains in capacity and performance. According to a press release Vodafone plans to begin the rollout of its 5G services in the first half of 2020.