Kit vendor Nokia has announced Zain KSA is all-in with Nokia’s 5G portfolio, while China Mobile is using its new massive MIMO gear.

Zain Saudi Arabia seems pretty keen on 5G, having announced its first 5G call back in May. It didn’t say anything about where it was getting its kit from at the time, but now seems to have given Nokia the green light to shout its deal win from the rooftops. Specifically the two companies have signed a three year deal, involving Nokia’s full 5G portfolio, to roll out 5G across Saudi Arabia.

Amr K. El Leithy, head of the Middle East and Africa market at Nokia, said:  “We are committed to transforming the service experience for Zain’s customers and enhancing industrial productivity by enabling extreme broadband services,” said Nokia’s head of MEA Amr K. El Leithy. “This contract, which includes 5G RAN, backhaul, security and services, demonstrates the breadth of our full-portfolio strengths and depth of global expertise in deploying these next-generation projects.”

Meanwhile over in China Nokia has also been given the all-clear by China Mobile to crow about the fact that the massive operator is the first to use its new 320W massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna. Apparently Nokia made this antenna specifically for the Chinese market and its massive bandwidth and coverage requirements, so it must be especially gratifying to see China Mobile snapping it up.

The development of the AirScale MAA with its industry-first 320W output is the direct result of input from the China Mobile team on what they needed to speed the deployment of 5G services to their customers,” said Mark Atkinson, Head of the 5G and Small Cells business at Nokia. “We look forward to continuing to work with CMCC as its 5G plans evolve.”

Nokia likes to bang on about its 43 commercial 5G deals at the end of its press releases these days, but tends not to mention that only 23 of them are with named operators and only five are currently live. Ericsson claims 22 publicly announced 5G contracts, with nine of them live. Huawei recently claimed 50 5G commercial contracts without naming any of the operators, so it looks like a tight race between the three of them.