Finnish vendor Nokia announced that it has reached a total of 63 commercial 5G contracts worldwide.
The company said that some of the customers include AT&T, KDDI, Korea Telecom, LG Uplus, NTT DOCOMO, O2, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Sprint, STC, T-Mobile US, Verizon, Vodafone Italy and Zain Saudi Arabia.
“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.”
Nokia highlighted that these 63 signed commercial contracts exclude any other type of 5G agreements, such as paid network trials, pilots or demonstrations. Including these agreements, the total number of 5G agreements would reach over 100.
“Nokia is the only network supplier whose 5G technology has been contracted by all four nationwide operators in the U.S., 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 also claimed to be 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. Approximately 60% of Nokia’s 5G customers select more than just New Radio from its end-to-end portfolio, the vendor said.
Rival vendor Ericsson Ericsson currently has 78 commercial 5G agreements or contracts with unique communication service providers, of which 24 are live networks.
Some key customers include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US, US Cellular, Verizon, Swisscom, TDC, Telenor, Vodafone UK, Wind , Etisalat, Optus, Ooredoo, STC, KT, SK Telecom and Telstra.
Also, Huawei said in September 2019 that it had reached 50 5G contracts globally.
