Softbank chooses Nokia for 5G

Nokia has been doing well in the networking business in recent time. Together with the Italian operator TIM, Nokia achieved data transport of 550 Gigabits per second on the 350 km Rome to Florence backbone network. This is also a European record for long-distance data transmission using the High-Speed networks, which will become a foundation for the development of a 5G network in Italy.
Then Nokia announced that Spanish Telefonica will be using Nokia’s Deepfield Cloud Intelligence analytics solution to improve user experience and troubleshoot content delivery in real time.
But, the nest achievement of all is being chosen as the equipment vendor for the development of a 5G network for a Japanese Softbank. Nokia announced that Softbank will be using AirScale solution in both distributed and centralized RAN configurations.

This is a significant deal since Nokia got it after Huawei was cut out of the deal because of the recent difficulties caused by the US ban of this company. Interestingly, Nokia won’t be the only vendor for 5G hardware and software solutions. Ericsson has been collaborating with Softbank for a long time now. Funny thing is that R&D department of Croatian based Ericsson Nikola Tesla, which was collaborating a lot with Softbank is actually based in Split, Croatia like Nokiamob :). Anyway, Softbank chose both Nokia and Ericsson to replace Huawei 4G equipment last year, so they were probably satisfied with the job Nokia did.
I don’t think that many operators will be willing, or able, to change the 4G/LTE equipment that Huawei made, but Nokia might be winning more jobs because of this. Maybe Docomo and KDDI will follow Softbank’s steps.
It’s not that I’m happy about the way Nokia is getting jobs because Nokia’s equipment is advanced and durable, but hey, maybe when Nokia starts winning more deals, there will be some money left for the development of smartphones that bear its name.