In a large implementation of so-called Open RAN technologies that will outbid China’s Huawei in the area, Deutsche Telecom has signed a contract with Finland’s Nokia and its Chinese partner Fujitsu to provide 5G network equipment for more than 3, 000 sites in northeastern Germany.
Nokia’s return as a supplier of radio access network (RAN ) equipment to Deutsche Telekom is announced in the contract on November 27 for the first time since 2017.
The implementation in Neubrandenbeug, north of Berlin, began in December 2023 with the inclusion of Nokia’s Open RAN-compliant 5G AirScale baseband option and Fujitsu’s television models into Deutsche TeleKom’s business system.
Claudia Nemat, Deutsche Telekom committee member for technology and innovation, said at the moment,  ,” Open RAN is essential to Deutsche Telekom’s strategy to promote greater dealer diversity and promote customer-oriented development in the radio access network. Our business rollout with Fujitsu and Nokia is a significant step in the development of multi-vendor Open RAN as the preferred network technology in the future.
Tommi Uitto, Nokia’s president of Mobile Networks, said on the news of the new deal that the company’s tech “ensures that multi-supplier O-RAN systems may be deployed without any agreements in terms of performance, energy efficiency or protection”.
He said that Nokia and Deutsche Telekom have “agreed to explore O-RAN technology around Cloud RAN, 3rd party CaaS]Connectivity-as-a-Service], RIC]RAN Intelligent Controller], SMO]Service Management and Orchestration ] and energy efficiency” . ,  ,  ,
Huawei and ZTE from China’s Huawei and ZTE from Germany’s 5G telecom network were not specifically stated in the two companies ‘ public statements, but the telecom trade press concentrated on that.
German telecom network operators, including Telefonica, Vodafone, and Deutsche Telekom, have agreed to remove Chinese equipment from their core networks by the end of 2026 and from their entire networks by the end of 2029, under the pressure of the US and the EU.
In June 2023, Thierry Breton, the EU’s then-commissioner for internal market, referred to Huawei and ZTE as “high-risk suppliers”.
Different businesses can supply various components of a telecom network using open RAN standards. This enables telecom service providers to choose between large suppliers of fully proprietary systems like Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia as well as from smaller national champions like Samsung in South Korea and NEC and Fujitsu in Japan.
In theory, Open RAN is a multi-vendor system. In practice, it tends toward what cynics call” single-vendor open RAN”, with the primary vendor being Nokia or Ericsson. Fujitsu competes with both of them. In 2023, ATT chose Ericsson, along with Fujitsu and software vendor Mavenir, as its primary Open RAN vendor.
Rakuten Mobile procures equipment and software from many different vendors, but chose Japan’s leading telecom equipment maker, NEC, to make its radio units. Open RAN was developed in conjunction with NTT DoCoMo by NEC. Samsung works with KDDI.
Huawei is shifting its focus to nations outside the US’s sphere of influence as a result of being barred from the European market for 5G and more cutting-edge telecom equipment.
Brazil, which has a population of about 215 million people, compared to 445 million for the EU and 85 million for Germany, has a GDP growth rate of about 3 %, compared to less than 1 % for the EU, and has experienced a slight decline in Germany.
Huawei has been in Brazil for more than two decades, supplying 3G, 4G and now 5G equipment to several mobile network operators, including Vivo, Claro and TIM.
It is also supplying 5G equipment to operators of private networks, including one controlling cameras, forklifts and other autonomous vehicles at Vivo’s distribution center in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
In July of this year, Claro, part of Mexico’s America Movil telecom group, successfully completed a test of 5.5G (5G-Advanced ) in Brasilia using Huawei equipment, suggesting that Brazil might be the second country after China to make commercial use of the new technology.
Additionally, Nokia and Ericsson supply private network operators in Brazil with 5G mobile and private network operators, according to an agreement signed in August between Nokia and TIM. Huawei and the two European businesses both run Brazilian factories for telecom equipment.
Only Costa Rica has prohibited the use of Chinese telecom equipment elsewhere in Latin America, according to a study conducted at the Spanish university Universidad de Navarra.
Near the US border, Mexico does not use Chinese telecom equipment. The service provider for Telcel in America Movil has installed Huawei in the south of the nation and Ericsson in the north.
Nokia made new agreements with Indonesia and Saudi Arabia on December 5. Through 2027, Nokia and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison ( IOH) plan to continue working on the expansion of IOH’s national 4G and 5G mobile network in Indonesia.
This comes after IOH’s 14-month core network consolidation project with Huawei is finished, which was announced at the end of August. In rural areas, average downlink times have since been shortened by up to 15 %, while social media response times have decreased and internet game and video performance has improved.
In Saudi Arabia, Nokia has introduced technology to improve the efficiency, capacity and reliability of Aramco’s fiber optic network. This follows the Saudi Telecom Company (STC )’s commercial launch last month of Huawei’s Superlink high-speed 5G wireless transmission system to serve far-offers of the nation.
As of right now, China has reduced Nokia and Ericsson’s presence to insignificance in retaliation, and the US and its allies continue to award telecom equipment contracts based on quality and price, while China and its allies have eliminated or are currently eliminating 5G equipment made by Huawei and ZTE.
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