Nokia said on Monday it has been selected by MTN South Africa for the first time ever as one of its 5G radio access network equipment providers, as the mobile carrier expands next-generation wireless services across the country.
The Finnish company will provide equipment from its AirScale portfolio, including 5G AirScale baseband, active antennas, and remote radio heads.
“Under the deal, Nokia will modernize the existing 2G, 3G, 4G radio network and expand MTN’s 5G radio network across 2,800 sites in the central and eastern part of the country,” Nokia said in a statement. Nokia did not give the financial details of the deal.
MTN South Africa, the second biggest carrier in the country, snapped up airwaves worth 5.2 billion rands or $282.66 million in a 14.4 billion rand spectrum auction in March last year. Even before the auction it had launched 5G services in select cities.
In a related development, Nokia is ditching the blue colour and it’s replacing it with whatever is more appropriate given the situation, meaning no specific colour scheme is assigned. Lundmark said that Nokia is no longer just a smartphone company, but a “business technology company”.
In addition to growing its telecom equipment business, Nokia is going to focus on selling gear to other businesses.
Those include private 5G networks and equipment for automated factories, which would position the company as a competitor to Microsoft and Amazon in the field. Lundmark mentioned that Nokia is considering developing and growing in other areas as well.
