T-Mobile and Nokia have agreed to a $3.5 billion deal to accelerate deployment of a nationwide 5G network.
Under terms of today’s announcement, T-Mobile gains access to Nokia’s complete end-to-end 5G technology, software and services portfolio. Additionally, Nokia will help construct T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network with 600 MHz and 28 GHz millimeter wave 5G capabilities, which are compliant with the new 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standards.
Specific offerings that T-Mobile plans to use include 5G acceleration services, CloudBand software, commercial AirScale radio platforms and cloud-native core, and AirFrame hardware.
“We are all in on 5G,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile chief technology officer, in a prepared statement. “Every dollar we spend is a 5G dollar, and our agreement with Nokia underscores the kind of investment we’re making to bring customers a mobile, nationwide 5G network. And together with Sprint, we’ll be able to do so much more.”
“Nokia and T-Mobile will advance the large-scale deployment of 5G services throughout the United States,” added Ashish Chowdhary, Nokia’s chief customer operations officer. “This is a testament to our companies’ strong and productive working relationship, one which has produced several important technological milestones in recent months, and which now allows us to make 5G a commercial reality.”
The two companies said that they would work together to develop, test and launch the next generation of 5G services, to provide enhanced services to enterprises, smart cities, utilities, transportation, health, manufacturing, retail and agriculture industries, and government agencies.
Nokia is in a pitched battle with competitors including Ericsson and Huawei, among others, for the global ramp up of 5G. Verizon is moving forward with Ericsson on select aspects of their 5G ramp up for example.
