Ericsson will provide 5G core network equipment in two major regions
While it appears that Chinese companies Huawei, ZTE have obtained majority of China Mobile’s 5G tender, the carrier has now awarded Swedish vendor Ericsson a new 5G contract for the second phase of its nationwide new radio (NR) standalone rollout, in which services will be extends to 17 provinces.
Under the terms of the new deal, Ericsson will further provide 5G core network equipment in two major regions, covering five provinces, as well as its cloud Voice over LTE, cloud Unified Data Management (UDM) and policy.
According to the company, the 5G core network will be deployed on NFVIÂ along with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration.
China Mobile is the world’s largest carrier in terms of subscribers and in the first quarter of 2020, added 29.17 million 5G subscribers. In an earnings statements, the carrier said it ended March with a total of 31.72 million 5G subscribers, compared to 2.55 million 5G customers at the end of last year.
At the beginning of April, China Mobile  awarded contracts valued at $5.2 billion to Huawei, ZTE and Ericsson for the build out of 232,143 base stations to support the ongoing roll out of its 5G network, with Huawei owning 57.2% of the base stations, while ZTE and Ericsson have 28.7% and 11.5%, respectively.
The decision marked Nokia’s unsuccessful bid for a portion of the contract.
Lately, Ericsson has been making progress in other regions of Asia, as well. Earlier this week, Thai mobile service provider True Corporation selected Ericsson as a 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) vendor as part of its national 5G network, which will operate on 700 MHz, 2.6 GHz and 26 GHz frequencies in the north, central-west and upper south regions of Thailand.
