Nokia insists nothing much has changed in its private 5G strategy. Which is a lie – everything has changed, as the Finnish vendor prepares to quit the private 5G market which it helped to create.
In sum – what to know:
Mission failed – Nokia’s campus edge (ECE) division will likely be sold off in 2026, along with 90% of its private 5G customers and contracts, and all of its key innovation.
Weak defence – Nokia’s claim about continuity hinges on post-sale RAN deals mostly with ECE buyer; otherwise, its defence masks a retreat to macro-scale telco-style deals.
Omni-shambles – Nokia’s messaging and marketing around its Capital Markets Day strategy announcement in New York has been a mess, with internal teams in the dark.
What a shambles. Nokia has now issued a statement, widely picked up, to clarify its new stance on private 5G. It says its “position and commitment” are “unchanged”, and that “mission-critical enterprises” remain a focus. Which is misleading in itself, verging on disingenuous, and follows mixed marketing messages at its Capital Markets Day event in New York earlier this week – where it announced its whole strategy-change. Because Nokia’s position has changed, except in terms of RAN sales, and its talk about “mission-critical enterprises” is a red herring on the grounds that this segment, as perceived by the market, is no longer a direct concern.
So what did Nokia say, and what does it mean? And what is its new position on private 5G – and specifically on the part of the private 5G market that is delivering the growth and transformation, which Nokia has invested in, opened up, and fronted-up? Its statement said: “Nokia’s leadership position and commitment to the private 5G market remain unchanged. Nokia continues to sell radios for private wireless deployments together with Nokia and third-party core. As communicated at our Capital Markets Day, Nokia’s key customer segments include not only telcos, AI and cloud, but mission-critical enterprises, including defense”.
Which, again, sounds like nothing much has changed – when it has.
It has been confirmed, separately, that its ‘enterprise campus edge’ (ECE) division, which delivers most of its private 5G sales (in terms of customers, contracts, and deployments) is up for sale in 2026. This is the news, in the end; this is the bombshell. The ECE unit, heavily backed by previous Nokia chief Pekka Lundmark, is responsible for the company’s Digital Automation Cloud (DAC / NDAC) private network solution, a shrunk-down edge version (available in different variants) of its original macro-grade public core – which was shipped during the sector’s salad days on server racks on lorries to nonplussed enterprises, and then mostly shipped out again.
The DAC solution – more than its AirScale radio network (RAN) units, but also together with them – is Nokia’s most important innovation in the ‘private 5G’ realm (as it is perceived, including by “mission-critical” enterprises). It is geared for ‘campus edge’ deployments, per the ECE nomenclature – which basically means any private network within a clearly-defined boundary. Which is most of the market – again, as it is commonly perceived. The ECE division is also home to Nokia’s Modular Private Wireless (MPW) solution, which brings a bigger core for bigger setups, stretching to regional deployments, and its micro-sized Perimeter Network (NPN) solution, which fits in a bag.
Nokia had about 960 private 4G/5G customers at the end of September, according to its own figures, which is a dominant market share – above 50 percent on the GSA sample-count (which only reviews decent-sized deployments outside of China, volunteered by member companies). The point is that about 90 percent of these have been signed by the ECE business, and remain contracted to it (typically on long term managed service deals); most of these, probably higher than 60 percent, use variants of the DAC system. And the lion’s share of these customers should be classified as “mission critical” – just by virtue of Nokia’s long-term focus on the hard-nosed Industry 4.0 market.
By putting the ECE business up for sale, Nokia will lose all of those long-term contracts. Which must be honoured, clearly; because if the plug gets pulled on 5G-OT deals at firms in maritime ports, industrial plants, and military bases – all critical national infrastructure – then the Helsinki hotline will ring off the hook. There is probably more in reputational currency than financial currency in some of these 5G arrangements. Meanwhile, Nokia will lose other AI-adjacent innovations, alongside, such as the E2E unit’s Mission-Critical Industrial Edge (MXIE) proposition, which proposes to bundle all the AI gadgetry into one Nokia-produced system.
As well, it will lose its drone networks, industrial applications, and industrial devices businesses. All the interesting stuff, basically.
Let us consider some of the other quotes from Nokia about all of this. Fierce Wireless has Justin Hotard, new chief executive at Nokia, refer to the ECE unit as a “a good business”, but (“candidly”) one that is “oriented around delivering systems integrations and solutions”. This is “versus” the company’s own “core technology”, he says. It is perhaps the most telling comment in all of this; that Nokia is retrenching, as Pablo Tomasi at Omdia called it in these pages already, and offloading anything that does not fit the big-Nokia big-telco upgrade model, whether that is geared to supplying 5G/6G systems to mobile operators or fibre/IP systems to cloud companies.
Everything else is too much like hard work, it seems – even if it draws directly on Nokia’s heritage, and works well in its wheelhouse. Hotard defines “mission-critical” as “things like utilities and rail, which build discrete private networks”. In part, this is the justification for Nokia’s defence of its position: that it will continue to deliver private 5G to “mission-critical” customers. But as above; only 10 percent (max) of its installed base of private 4G/5G networks are sold to these types of clients. They will be much bigger deals, but many fewer, much less innovative, with much less room for growth; they use variants of its macro-scale public core systems, and are, to all intents and purposes, much like its telco business.
Elsewhere, TelecomTV has a piece – based on the Nokia PR line – which says “we’re not quitting” (when it is, basically), and suggests Nokia will continue to sell via mobile operators (which it isn’t doing, very much). A spokesperson is quoted as saying: “We’re still going to be serving private 5G wireless systems to enterprises, but through communications service providers, which is what we’re doing now anyway.” The problem, here, is that the mothership might be selling macro-sized public-safety 5G networks, utility grid 5G systems, and pieces of railway 5G coverage under the private-networks banner, but they’re not private 5G in the way the market is defined.
And most of them – certainly most utility grid or train systems – are not sold via operators; they’re more often sold by Nokia’s own teams. The ECE unit, meanwhile, has shifted its strategy over the past five years to grow its indirect channels; last we heard, about 70 percent goes via third parties. But much of that – over 50 percent – is not with operators, but with specialist operators, integrators, and resellers. Yes, the ECE team has good carrier partnerships, notably with Verizon, Telefonica, Orange, and Vodafone; but it does as well with specialists like Citymesh. What jars as well is that Nokia is reverting to type by cosying-up to its old operator customers in a way it laughed at Ericsson for doing five years ago – when the market could not afford to wait for telcos to get their houses in order.
The other justification for Nokia’s defence – and really, the only one that might explain why it is “not quitting” – is that its ECE business buys a lot of RAN equipment from (and contributes RAN revenues to) its old ‘mobile networks’ / new ‘mobile infrastructure’ division. Often, it also sells to enterprises in tandem with microwave backhaul or even IP-MPLS, via its ‘network infrastructure’ division. All of which rather screws the ECE revenue figures, as bundled with other surplus ‘portfolio businesses’ on a slide in New York this week. Post sale, it will still buy private 5G RAN equipment from Nokia – just maybe not exclusively from Nokia.
Which is the justification for Nokia’s statement about staying in the private 5G game. And also explanation, to an extent, that Nokia will pair its radio gear with third-party core networks (previously Nokia’s own) in the private 5G game. But it won’t have any of the customer relationships, vertical expertise, or portfolio solutions – and it will buy-backwards the other way, every time a utility customer or a rail customer wants the MPW solution to cover wide-area operations and the DAC solution to cover local-area hubs and sites.
So, yes, it can be argued that Nokia is still in private 5G, and nothing really changes – except that it is going to sell a definitive roster of private 5G service contracts with A-list “mission-critical” enterprises to Dell, or Siemens, or Kyndryl, or whoever stumps up. Who will be able to ride the “AI supercycle” on private 5G into critical enterprise-edge venues.
As a footnote, as well, the confusion around this mad (stupid, as we wrote before; and got called “histrionic”) decision is Nokia’s fault. When Hotard joined Nokia six months ago, the firm moved to unify its divisional marketing teams into a single global operation, which somehow decided to run slides and messaging about mission-critical enterprises, as served by ECE, over the top of a strategy update about an AI future without ECE. Plus, it was a shambles because – based on what RCR has been told by people getting in touch since the last article – lots of staff in the affected divisions were in the dark until after the slides ran, the press were told, and the phones started to ring.
