Nokia’s 20-year history with China Mobile is paying off as the world’s largest carrier builds its TD-LTE network. On Friday Nokia Networks said China Mobile will spend $970 million dollars on Nokia’s equipment, software and services this year and next.
This contract news puts some numbers on Nokia’s previous announcement of its China Mobile win. Last fall the infrastructure provider said it had won more of China Mobile’s LTE business than any other non-Chinese vendor. Nokia said that all foreign vendors won 11% of China Mobile’s contracts, but that it had won a bit more by supplying resellers.
Nokia has said that it is the only non-Chinese vendor to support the evolution of TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE. TD-SCDMA is China’s national 3G standard, and TD-LTE is China Mobile’s LTE standard. It uses time division to separate uploads and downloads, whereas LTE in North America uses frequency division, or separate channels.
Nokia is supplying China Mobile with evolved packet core and GSM equipment, core application platforms, OSS, software, and services. The company’s equipment will support service in China Mobile’s 1.9 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 2.3 GHz frequency bands. Nokia said last year that it will deploy part of the network in TD-SCDMA/TD-LTE dual mode.
China Mobile has already taken delivery of some of the equipment covered in this contract, but the two companies took advantage of the Sino-German Economic Forum in Berlin to actually sign the contract. “This contract marks another milestone in the strategic partnership between China Mobile and Nokia Networks,” said Markus Borchert, president of the Greater China region at Nokia Networks.
