Finnish networking giant Nokia has announced a new agreement with Chinese operator China mobile worth $1.5 billion to deploy cloud network infrastructure.

The one-year Yuan 9.927 billion frame agreement covers work for 2016 and will include the deployment of Nokia’s AirScale cloud base station. The stated aim of the agreement is to move China Mobile to a more flexible cloud network infrastructure.

“This is a highly significant agreement with our longstanding partner,” said Mike Wang, President of the joint management team of Nokia Networks China and ASB. “It strengthens Nokia’s position as a leading provider of next-generation technologies in China, and reflects our larger footprint in the country following the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.”

AirScale is inevitably being labelled as ‘5G-ready’ and is based on the AirFrame family of datacentre solutions launched by Nokia a year ago. Nokia says it will continue to work closely with China Mobile in future, maintaining a relationship that has been in place since 1994.