Nokia wins Taiwan Mobile 5G contract worth $450 million

Supantha Mukherjee
·1 min read
FILE PHOTO: Visitors gather outside the Nokia booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

By Supantha Mukherjee

(Reuters) - Finnish telecoms equipment maker Nokia Oyj said on Monday it has won a 5G contract worth about 400 million euros ($449.48 million) from Taiwan Mobile to build out the telecom operator's next-generation network as the sole supplier.

A supplier to Taiwan Mobile's earlier networks, Nokia will prepare for the deployment this month and complete the migration to 5G standalone within a three-year period.

Nokia, along with Nordic rival Ericsson, has picked up most of the 5G contracts in Taiwan.

While Nokia also won 5G contracts from Taiwan Star and Chunghwa Telecom, Ericsson picked up the deal with Far Eas Tone and a part of the contract from Chunghwa.

To offset hurdles faced last year, the Finnish telecom operator has been scripting a turnaround by diversifying its chipset supply and grabbing 5G deals. Earlier this month, Nokia picked up 5G contracts from Canada's Bell Canada and Telus Corp, along with an order from a Singapore telecom operator.

However, Nokia did not win any 5G radio contracts from Chinese telecom companies - China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - in recent bidding rounds, excluding a part of China Unicom's 5G core network contract.

Huawei, ZTE and Ericsson got all the 5G radio contracts from the three top vendors in China.

($1 = 0.8899 euros)

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)