Ericsson and Nokia 5G duel moves to Taiwan

Both Ericsson and Nokia have won 5G RAN work with Taiwanese telco Chungwa Telecom, which they’re happy about.

In what is becoming a bit of a thing, Nokia and Ericsson simultaneously issued press releases announcing their 5G deal wins with Chungwa. This follows a similar PR race over Japanese MNO KDDI last month, except this time it looks like Ericsson got a bit more of the action. It’s also part of the broader industry pissing competition narrative that we chatted about in this podcast.

Ericsson will be helping Chunghwa out with its mid and high-frequency 5G radios on both an NSA and SA basis. On top of that it seems to be the sole supplier for the 5G core and will even provide fronthaul and IP backhaul transport. Nokia, meanwhile, is a lot less specific in its press release, just referring to NSA and SA 5G radio over multiple bands.

“Our enhanced 5G platform perfectly suits CHT’s needs to quickly launch new services to the market,” said Chafic Nassif, President of Ericsson Taiwan. “This cooperation will serve to not only provide Taiwanese consumers and enterprises with the highest quality communication services but also accelerate the overall progress of 5G development in Taiwan.”

“Our technology will assist Chunghwa Telecom in its early launch of 5G services in Taiwan, while also allowing it to explore new revenue generators across consumer and enterprise markets,” said Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia (do they not have a Taiwan dude?). “As one of the pioneering members of Chunghwa Telecom’s Taiwan 5G Alliance, we will jointly promote the digital transformation for public and private sectors to accelerate 5G momentum in Taiwan.”

“In the process of upgrading to 5G networks, we need to shorten the time it takes to launch new features,” said Max Chen, President of the Mobile Business Group at Chunghwa. “Ericsson’s 5G core solution enables our 4G core to flexibly evolve into a shared 4G/5G network. Meanwhile, Ericsson’s Cloud VoLTE solution will allow our customers to enjoy a more convenient and higher quality 4G voice service today as well as 5G voice services in the future.

“The transformation empowered by Nokia’s 5G technology will undoubtedly revolutionize the way we interact with the world. Chunghwa Telecom is committed to delivering industry-leading 5G to its consumer and enterprise customers, and we have every confidence in Nokia delivering this in a quick and reliable rollout.”

Chen’s Nokia comment was definitely weaker than his Ericsson one, wasn’t it? Nokia is always going to publicise its deal wins, but this announcement had a defensive feel to it and Nokia presumably knew Ericsson got a bigger piece of the action this time. So that seems to be one-all in East Asia for the two Nordic kit vendors and the season may well be suspended before we get a chance to go to extra time.