Finnish vendor Nokia has won a contract to deploy more than 3,000 sites for Deutsche Telekom's (DT) Open RAN network in Germany.
In winning the contract, it marks a return to providing RAN equipment to Deutsche Telekom for Nokia, after DT chose to work with Ericsson for parts of its network in 2017.
Nokia will be replacing equipment installed from Huawei at the 3,000 sites.
DT has worked extensively with the Chinese vendor, previously outlining a willingness to retain the vendor's network infrastructure, amid pressure from the German government and the European Union to remove Huawei's kit from within its mobile networks.
The German government wants the country's mobile core networks to have no Huawei or ZTE kit by the end of 2026, while it also wants the 5G RAN equipment of Germany’s carriers to be free of “critical” network management functionality by the end of 2029.
Nokia confirmed it will work alongside Fujitsu to cover DT's plans for its mass rollout of Open RAN technology. According to Nokia, its commercial deployment is already underway in the Neubrandenburg area of Northern Germany.
The agreement with DT will see Nokia provide its Open RAN 5G AirScale portfolio, which it will integrate with Fujitsu's mid-band remote radio head products.
“While others talk about doing Open RAN, Nokia is actually doing it and doing it on a grand scale," said Tommi Uitto, president of mobile networks at Nokia.
"This is a significant deal for Nokia as we have been selected by the largest network operator in Europe to extend our partnership. We are proud to have been chosen because of our technology leadership, innovative product portfolio, and open approach. We look forward to expanding our partnership further in the future.”
Nokia has been under pressure to score more Open RAN deals after it missed out on a lucrative deal in the US with AT&T to Ericsson.
The vendor signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with DT last year, along with Fujitsu and Mavenir Telecom, to work on Open RAN deployments.
DT is Europe's largest mobile network operator, and as of the end of 2023, has more than 61 million mobile subscribers in Germany.
“This deal is further evidence of our significant commitment to multi-vendor Open RAN and ensuring we have greater supplier choice for radio access networks," added Abdu Mudesir, group CTO and managing director of technology Germany at Deutsche Telekom.
"The network performance in the already implemented area is delivering the best customer experience. And now together with Nokia, we look forward to scaling up Open RAN in Germany.”
