Nokia waves Telia win in Ericsson’s face

Nokia thinks it’s important that everyone knows its cloud-native packet core solution has been chosen by Swedish operator group Telia Company.

There is, of course, intense competition between Finnish Nokia and Swedish Ericsson, so securing the business of Telia must surely carry some extra weight for both of them. TeliaSonera is the clear leader in the Swedish market and Telia Finland is a solid second there, behind Elisa. It’s also a significant player in the Danish and Norwegian markets so it’s fair to say Telia is the daddy of the Nordic telecoms market.

So the news that Nokia has been selected as the sole vendor for packet core for the entire group, including Estonia and Lithuania, is a pretty big deal for Nokia and conversely a blow for Ericsson. Whether anyone else should care is another matter but this is a B2B telecoms trade title and we have to cover this stuff so just back off, OK? Having said that Nokia used this opportunity to shoehorn a bunch of related product propaganda that we don’t feel like repeating, so what can you do?

“There is tremendous potential with the continued growth of mobile broadband, and with new services and 5G in the near future,” explained Sri Reddy, SVP of Nokia’s IP and optical business. “To take advantage of these opportunities, Telia must deploy a new generation cloud-native packet core that is able to connect to a greater variety of devices and deliver a broader range of services over multiple access technologies.

“Nokia uniquely combines field-proven cloud-native software, cloud technologies and mobile and IP routing expertise to help Telia speed up service delivery, deliver greater scale and capacity and operate its network more efficiently. Plus, because our cloud packet core is built on our robust, field proven router software (SROS), it provides Telia with a solid foundational framework for the evolution of its 4G and the path forward to 5G.”

See? They always squeeze the propaganda in somehow. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! And, of course, Nokia wasn’t about to let us off the hook without name-dropping 5G a couple of times. Touché Nokia – well played.