Ericsson has scored a big win, beating out Nokia for contracts with the world’s largest telecoms company, China Mobile.
Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei are locked in a three-way battle for dominance in the 5G equipment market. Huawei is widely thought of as the market leader, although Ericsson has taken issue with that, touting its long history of being first with new technology and specifically 5G rollouts.
In its latest win, Ericsson has scored a contract with China Mobile to provide 5G core (5GC) and radio access network (RAN) components.
“Under the terms of this new deal, China Mobile extends its 5G RAN partnership with Ericsson to 17 provinces, with the deployment of Ericsson Radio System products and solutions, as it seeks to further roll out 5G services across the country,” reads the company’s announcement.
“In addition, Ericsson will provide 5G core network equipment in two major regions, covering five provinces. The 5G Core network will be deployed on NFVI along with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration. As part of a previous agreement, Ericsson is also providing Cloud VoLTE, Cloud Unified Data Management (UDM) and Policy.”
The China Mobile contract is another feather in Ericsson’s cap, and will lend weight to the company’s assertion that it can compete with Huawei anywhere—including on the Chinese company’s home turf.