Nokia signs 5G deals in India

28. 07. 2022 Thursday / By: Robert Denes / Industrial / Exact time: BST / Print this page

N okia, Ericsson and Samsung have managed to win 5G equipment contracts with India's two biggest telecom operators, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which have left China's Huawei and ZTE out of their 5G network rollout strategy.

While Samsung first managed to secure the network business from Bharti Airtel, Europe's Ericsson and Nokia are reportedly getting the network business from Reliance Jio, which has worked exclusively with Samsung for its 4G wireless network requirements.

Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea continues to negotiate 5G contracts with European suppliers, people familiar with the matter said. They added that the loss-making telecommunications company will initially place orders for circles where it has a revenue market share of 15 percent and above, these are metro plus category circles.

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio are believed to have finalized 5G equipment partners, signing contracts with Finland's Nokia, Sweden's Ericsson and Korea's Samsung, officially ruling out Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE from rolling out the next-generation technology.

Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea continues to negotiate 5G contracts with European suppliers, people familiar with the matter said. They added that the loss-making telecommunications company will initially place orders for circles where it has at least a 15 percent revenue market share, these are the metro plus category circles.

Notably, European manufacturers are supplying mobile phone equipment to the Mukesh Ambani-led telecom company for the first time. So far, Jio has only partnered with Samsung on its 4G network. For its part, Samsung is supplying mobile network equipment to Airtel for the first time.

According to the report, Airtel decided to award the 5G business to Korea's Samsung due to concerns in some telecom circles about a possible duopoly between Nokia and Ericsson in the absence of Chinese manufacturers.

The Mukesh Ambani-led telco will place a "significantly larger purchase order" with Ericsson after the ongoing spectrum auction concludes, in addition to giving deals to Nokia and Samsung. Nokia and Ericsson have held talks on 5G trials with Jio.

The report added that Jio plans to repeat its 4G network rollout strategy and will aggressively roll out new 5G sites in the first phase of commercial rollout to cover more cities. On the other hand, Airtel will place orders for 15,000-20,000 5G sites in the initial phase.

"Nokia and Ericsson's 5G equipment is better than Samsung's in terms of quality of performance," the source was quoted as saying, explaining the rationale behind the telco's move to outbid Samsung. European carriers are aggressive in terms of trading margins to get into Jio's network, he added.


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