Ericsson scores twice in Nordic region
Gains LTE and multi-network deals with Telia Norway and DNA, Huawei wins too
Published: 11 January, 2011
READ MORE: Norway | Ericsson | LTE
Ericsson is on a roll in its native region, gaining further LTE deals from TeliaSonera in Norway and from DNA in Finland. However, Telia's business will have to be shared with Huawei.
Telia was the world's first operator of commercial LTE services, and has been expanding its original networks in Sweden and Norway, and building out in Denmark, Finland, the Baltic States and central Asia. Its contracts have been shared between Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens, though in its latest Norwegian deal, NSN will see its 2G and 3G equipment replaced by multi-standard base stations from the other two vendors.
In the new three-year deal, Telia's Norwegian subsidiary NetCom will deploy Ericsson's RBS 6000 flexible base stations in the northern region of Norway, and Huawei's rival product, SingleRAN, in the south. Both systems support GSM, HSPA and LTE. The carrier aims to achieve 3G coverage for 95% of the country's population, and LTE coverage for 89%, by 2012.
The contract is typical of the network modernization deals that are being announced by a rising tide of carriers in developed markets, such as Sprint in the US. These take advantage of the new breed of flexible base stations to reduce cost and complexity with single networks supporting multiple standards. They are a great opportunity for vendors, giving them the chance to knock out incumbents, as Huawei has done for NSN in Norway. NSN has its multi-network platform, Flexi.
Ericsson's part of the NetCom agreement also includes roll-out services and its Mini-Link microwave backhaul. It is also supplying GSM, HSPA and LTE equipment, plus backhaul and network management, to DNA, in a three-year contract in Finland. DNA, with a turnover of €652m, was formed a decade ago by the merger of the mobile interests of three cooperative operators in Finland, operating until 2007 as a subsidiary of Finnet. In 2010 it took over Welho, a fixed operator in the Helsinki area.
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