Telenor Norway goes all-in on Ericsson for 5G RAN

Norwegian vendor Telenor has announced Ericsson will be the sole vendor for its 5G radio access network, replacing incumbent Huawei.

“We are happy to announce that we have chosen Ericsson to start building the future 5G radio network in Norway, and I am confident we now are perfectly positioned to be in the forefront of the country’s network modernisation,” said Petter-Børre Furberg, CEO of Telenor Norway.

“As the first mobile operator on 5G in Scandinavia, Telenor will ramp up the roll out of 5G to our customers in Norway in 2020. The full modernisation of the mobile network in Norway is an ambitious undertaking, and something we are excited to get started on.”

A wholesale change of vendors such as this is a tricky process if you want to avoid any disruption to the service. The modernisation of the RAN, which currently uses entirely Huawei kit, is expected to take 4-5 years. So Huawei will be in play during that time, including some of the 5G upgrade work. That implies this is a business decision rather than a security one, which is consistent with the Norwegian governments apparent decision not to ban Huawei from 5G.

“We expect 5G to be the one technology that will transform our society the most in the next decade,” said Sigve Brekke, CEO of Telenor Group. “We have been through a thorough process to evaluate all the main vendors’ ability to deliver on Telenor’s requirements for the future mobile network.

“When selecting the vendor for the radio access network, we have considered important factors like technical quality, ability to innovate and modernise the network, commercial terms and conditions, as well as carried out an extensive security evaluation. Based on the comprehensive and holistic evaluation, we have decided to introduce a new partner for this important technology shift in Norway.”

This news comes hot on the heels of Telia Norway making exactly the same decision, so Ericsson has Norway pretty much sewn up when it comes to RAN work for the foreseeable future. In the core Ericsson has to coexist with Nokia and that is set to continue with 5G. For Huawei, being frozen out of a market in which it is being allowed to compete freely must be a significant blow.