Nokia and Ericsson compete to be SoftBank’s 5G best friend

The public battle for 5G ascendancy between Nokia and Ericsson has moved to Japan, with simultaneous SoftBank deal win announcements.

Nokia says SoftBank has selected it as a ‘strategic partner to drive its commercial 5G offering’. In other words Nokia is selling SoftBank a bunch of 5G gear. Specifically we’re talking about the Nokia AirScale RAN product suite, the 5G version of which is added to all the stuff Nokia already does for SoftBank.

“We are delighted to continue our long-term relationship with SoftBank and to be working with them as a trusted end to end partner at such an important milestone in the transformation to 5G. We are committed to help SoftBank launch their commercial 5G network,” said John Harrington, Head of Nokia Japan.

Meanwhile Ericsson has also announced a 5G RAN deal with SoftBank, which is sensibly pursuing a multi-vendor policy of 5G kit (although presumably not Huawei or ZTE). This will, of course, involve the Ericsson Radio System and this deal seems to apply specifically to mid and high frequency bands (Nokia made no comment about frequency bands).

“SoftBank and Ericsson have been partners since the 2G era and we are thrilled to support them on this latest part of their technology journey,” said Chris Houghton, Senior Vice President, Head of Market Area North East Asia, Ericsson. “With the help of our advanced product portfolio, SoftBank can unlock the potential of 5G for Japanese society and we look forward to building on our long-standing partnership.”

Nokia also mentioned it now has 38 5G commercial contracts, including 20 with named customers. Ericsson made no equivalent claim but it recently identified 18 named 5G contracts and has recently amended that to reveal six of them currently involve live networks. We don’t know the total number of commercial contracts Ericsson has, and its public list doesn’t yet include SoftBank, so it looks like the Nordic rivals are more or less level when it comes to 5G at this stage.