(Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Telekom AG chose Nokia Oyj to roll out more than 3,000 open network sites in northern Germany, the Finnish equipment provider said on Wednesday.
The deal is a commercial, large-scale deployment of OpenRAN, a technology that allows telecom operators to pick and choose parts from different vendors, rather than having to buy the entire stack from a single vendor. Nokia’s technology will connect with Fujitsu radios.
The German operator had already used Nokia and Fujitsu to roll out OpenRAN sites in the country. The ramp-up will see Nokia replacing the incumbent vendor, Huawei, with Nokia’s OpenRAN-compliant technology, Deutsche Telekom said.
The deal comes after Nokia lost out on a $14 billion deal to roll out OpenRAN for US operator AT&T Inc. to competitor Ericsson AB. It was a major blow to the Finnish operator, especially as it had been earlier to embrace OpenRAN.
“While others talk about doing OpenRAN, Nokia is actually doing it and doing it on a grand scale,” Tommi Uitto, Nokia’s president of mobile networks, said in a statement. “This is a significant deal for Nokia as we have been selected by the largest network operator in Europe to extend our partnership.”
JPMorgan analyst Sandeep Deshpande wrote in a note that 3,000 stations is roughly 10% or less of Deutsche Telekom’s German network. “However it indicates that Nokia’s product portfolio is being considered by customers who removed them in the 5G transition,” he added.
(Updates with context from Deutsche Telekom and analyst comment)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
