Nokia: ‘5G is not delayed by ban on Chinese suppliers’.

Nokia does not expect that the roll-out of 5G services in the European market will be delayed by the possible exclusion of Chinese companies for security reasons. That’s what CEO Rajeev Suri told Reuters.

For some time now, there has been a debate in Europe about warnings from the United States to ban equipment from Huawei in China. Several providers state that this could delay the roll-out of 5G for years. However, Suri now states that this is not so bad. The real reason why Europe is lagging behind the United States is, according to him, that the cost of auctioning the spectrum is high in certain countries. In addition, there is a delay in publishing the spectrum.

“I don’t think you can say that you know that the situation this has created will slow down the rollout of 5G, or prevent others from supplying equipment. That wouldn’t be accurate,” says Suri.

The United States has been warning Europe for some time about the use of Huawei equipment. According to the country, the equipment is being misused by the Chinese government to spy. Huawei has always denied this. President Guo Ping said again during MWC in Barcelona that it would never allow countries to build backdoors into their equipment.

Finland

Nokia is the second largest player in this market, behind Huawei. The company announced that it has won a contract in Australia, whereby the 5G equipment will live on provider Optus. In March, fifty locations should go live. Huawei was banned in Australia.

In addition, it has agreed with Korea Telecom to carry out 5G tests for service automation, network virtualisation and slicing. This allows multiple networks to be run on a shared infrastructure. Finally, there are plans for Nokia to collaborate with British company Vodafone for active antennas to boost 5G capacity and reduce costs.