Chunghwa strengthens Nokia ties with 5G-Advanced deal

The agreement covers Nokia RAN equipment already in operation in the central and southern areas of the country.

Under the deal, Nokia will supply CHT with baseband, massive MIMO radios, and remote radio head (RRH) products from its AirScale portfolio. CHT will also avail itself of Nokia's MantaRay network management solutions, including MantaRay SON, paving the way for a self-configuring network. MantaRay also supports various power-saving innovations, including deep sleep mode, which CHT hopes will bring about further improvements to energy consumption.

"This expanded deal will help Chunghwa Telecom enhance its network performance, capacity, and robustness and maintain its leading position and prepare for network evolution. Our energy-efficient AirScale portfolio and the AI-powered MantaRay solutions will also support CHT's sustainability efforts by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions," said Tommi Uitto, president of mobile networks at Nokia.

In addition, Nokia will also supply its 7250 interconnect router (IXR) to enable baseband aggregation at cell sites, helping CHT to meet the growing demands of its business customers.

"CHT continues to evolve its 5G network to deliver best-in-class connectivity experiences to its customers and maintain our market-leading position in Taiwan," said Chung-Yung Chia, VP of Chunghwa's network technology group. "This new improved deal with our technology partner, Nokia, will prepare our network for the 5G-Advanced era with higher performance, AI-powered intelligence, and lower energy consumption."

Being the Taiwanese incumbent, it's no surprise that Chungwha has opted to work with European vendors on 5G, rather than ZTE and Huawei.

Both Nokia and Ericsson were selected by CHT for its 5G deployment back in 2020. From what was divulged at the time, Ericsson seemed to win the lion's share of the deal, being chosen to upgrade the core network and supply mid and high-frequency radios for both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) 5G. It also provided fronthaul and IP backhaul transport.

In comparison, Nokia was chosen to supply NSA and SA radios supporting multiple bands, and seemingly not a lot else.

Nokia has since won follow-on contracts with CHT though, most notably April 2021's 5G expansion deal.

In 2022, CHT tapped up Nokia to upgrade 4,000 sites to boost capacity and improve energy efficiency, and last May they announced some joint work on trialling 25G PON for 5G small cell fronthaul.

There has been a similar trickle of announcements from Ericsson too, including an upgrade in 2022 to reduce power consumption, and two memoranda of understanding (MoUs) paving the way for collaboration on future network tech.

One was signed at 2023's Mobile World Congress (MWC) covering research on 5G-Advanced and 6G – as well as commercialisation of 5G SA and network slicing – while the other was agreed at this year's show, and has a narrower focus on 5G-Advanced.

Earlier this month, Ericsson also won a network modernisation deal with CHT to further reduce the telco's carbon emissions.

With both Ericsson and Nokia struggling to revive their respective fortunes following the 5G capex peak, it is little wonder that neither of them miss an opportunity to share positive developments on the networking front.