- Sure, Nokia lost RAN business at Verizon and AT&T a long time ago
- But the Finnish vendor is still in the mix at all three major U.S. wireless operators
- Even though the Tier 2 and 3 market is shrinking, it remains an important one for Nokia
Nokia is down supplying radios to the big U.S. wireless carriers. But it’s not out.
TL;DR version: Verizon ditched Nokia as a wireless RAN vendor in 2020, awarding a contract to Samsung instead. Then AT&T snubbed Nokia in 2023 when it awarded a $14 billion, multi-year open RAN contract to rival Ericsson.
“You could say that maybe the radio share is diminishing at those places, but overall, Nokia is still very involved,” said Serena Chisnell, head of Mobile Networks Market Unit at Nokia.
For one thing, it takes a long time to replace all the radios in a network. For another, Nokia also supplies all kinds of things related to the core, in addition to routers, customer premise equipment (CPE) and even microwave, she said.
That’s not all. At Verizon, Nokia provides gear for private network deployments, like what it’s doing in the Thames Freeport, and Nokia is part of the 6G lab that Verizon unveiled last week. At AT&T, Nokia was awarded a multi-year expansion deal earlier this year to deliver 5G IMS voice core and digital operations software.
In fact, Recon Analytics’ Daryl Schoolar said Nokia’s in a “great place” with AT&T, which is in its fiber network. Last year, AT&T awarded Nokia a multi-year contract to provide fiber optic equipment.
“They still have business with those operators. It’s just not that big-ticket RAN business,” he said.
Of course, T-Mobile remains a Nokia RAN customer, a fact that was featured front and center during Nokia’s event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March after a report surfaced that T-Mobile was on the brink of ousting Nokia from its network, which didn’t happen.
Nokia and small carriers
Beyond the Big 3, Nokia also serves smaller operators in the U.S. Chisnell spoke with Fierce on the sidelines of the recent Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) annual convention in San Antonio, Texas. Except for T-Mobile, CCA represents mostly smaller carriers, and Chisnell is responsible for U.S. accounts that don’t include the Big 3 U.S. wireless carriers. She’s also a CCA board member.
Consolidation – the most recent big transaction being T-Mobile’s acquisition of UScellular assets – is shrinking the membership of CCA, but the smaller operators remain a valuable market for Nokia. Some of them are using Nokia to replace Huawei and/or ZTE equipment as part of the “rip & replace” program.
“This whole space is very important to Nokia,” Chisnell noted.
Nokia is working with cable operators that are deploying strand mounts and small cells with their CBRS spectrum, even though those operators do not deploy traditional radios in the same way that big wireless operators do. Smaller operators are also starting to show interest in using Nokia CBRS products for fixed wireless access (FWA) deployment.
Nokia is neutral on the question of whether high power levels should be granted for CBRS, something companies including EchoStar’s Boost Mobile have been pushing for. Cable companies and smaller wireless internet service providers (WISPs) are generally opposed to higher power due to concerns about interference with their equipment.
“We're very neutral because some of my customers are asking for higher power and some of the customers are not,” she said.
Smaller operators and 6G: Too soon
6G is not high on the priority list of a lot of the smaller U.S. carriers.
“There's still a lot unknown out there and some of these carriers are just starting on their 5G route, so 6G still seems a ways out,” she said.
That’s not to say they aren’t considering it. “What I think 6G will be for these smaller carriers will be more niche markets,” she said.
Regional players are often well embedded in their communities, so much so that their brands are emblazoned across college campuses and universities, for example. Rather than focus on wide area 6G deployments, "it’ll be a more concentrated effort,” she said.