Ericsson confirms Wind Tre RAN deal

A few days after the news was leaked Ericsson has formally announced a major deal win with Wind Tre in Italy.

Earlier this week it was reported that Ericsson had scored a €600 million deal to supply base stations to Italian operator Wind Tre. The added twist to that leak was that the deal apparently came at the expense of ZTE, with Wind Tre quite reasonably concluding the embattled kit vendor might not be most reliable destination for its hard-earned millions.

Perhaps as a result of that leak Ericsson has not got the green light from Wind Tre to crow about the deal. It didn’t reveal the value and resisted the temptation to gloat at ZTE, but confirmed that the deal involves the provision of Ericsson Radio System gear, including radios and basebands, from October this year.

“Our strengthened partnership with Wind Tre will bring the best radio access solutions on the market to life in their nationwide network,” said Arun Bansal, Head of Europe & Latin America at Ericsson. “This will help to ensure that Wind Tre delivers the best user experience possible to its customers in an increasingly data hungry and ultra-low-latency demanding market.”

This deal augments the core network deal Ericsson scored with Wind Tre back in April. This means Wind Tre is seriously committed to Ericsson as a kit vendor going into the 5G era and will be an important case study in the effectiveness, or otherwise, of its 5G gear.