Ericsson beats Huawei to win T-Mobile Netherlands 5G work

T-Mobile Netherlands has announced that Ericsson will be the apparently sole RAN vendor for its 5G network upgrade.

The announcement makes no mention of who the incumbent RAN vendor is but, as Light Reading was quick to point out, that was out-of-favour Chinese vendor Huawei. Instead it stressed how intensive and exhaustive the selection process was, with no stone left unturned in the search for the perfect vendor, singular.

“I am confident that with the support of Ericsson we will continue to offer our customers the best mobile telecom experience,” said Søren Abildgaard, CEO of T-Mobile Netherlands. “We have been leading in 4G for many years and we are and will continue to be so with 5G. In recent years, we have built a globally acclaimed 4G network.

“Our ambition is to remain among the world’s leaders in 5G as well. Ericsson has shown us with its plans and ambitions how we can make this possible together. We are eager to offer customers a sublime 5G user experience. Customers are going to experience an even much faster and even more reliable network. We will also remain competitive in terms of price. We can’t wait to get started with this!”

It seems a bit ungrateful not to acknowledge the vendor of this ‘globally acclaimed 4G network’, but we all know why. Huawei is the vendor that shall not be named in any country that wants to stay in America’s good books, which certainly means Western Europe. So the only real competitor to Ericsson in this process will have been Nokia, perhaps with Samsung striving for attention in the back ground.

Having said that, as Light Reading pointed out, Huawei is apparently still a RAN option in the Netherland’s, as indicated by KPN’s 2019 decision to go in that direction. So maybe Ericsson did just beat Huawei in a fair competition, but it’s hard to imagine geopolitical considerations played no part whatsoever.

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