Ericsson and Nokia have won a $2.7 billion contract from VodafoneThree to expand and upgrade its 5G network infrastructure in the UK.

The Nordic giants will work with the British operator as part of its $14.8 billion network investment plan, which aims to reach 99.95 percent 5G standalone (5G SA) population coverage in the UK by 2034.

Under the agreement, Ericsson will roll out its radio access network (RAN) and core network solutions at more than 10,000 sites across the nation, upgrading existing 4G and 5G infrastructure.

These include the four UK capital cities – London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast – as well as other major English cities, such as Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Hull, and Bournemouth, alongside Aberdeen in Scotland.

Nokia, meanwhile, will provide equipment from its RAN portfolio to roughly 7,000 sites across the UK while working on VodafoneThree’s new voice core.

The Finnish operator was also awarded a separate deal to maintain the existing Three UK core during the transition to the new core setup.

Ericsson and VodafoneThree

The partnership, projected to last eight years, continues Ericsson’s relationship with the British firm, which included 5G deployment for Vodafone UK prior to its acquisition of Three UK in May.

The deal is one of Ericsson’s biggest to date, netting the Swedish vendor $1.3bn, and comparable to its 5G deal with Indian operator Bharti Airtel. Nokia has a similar multi-year, multibillion-dollar partnership with Bharti, with exact remuneration for both European firms yet to be detailed.

Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core and 5G-Advanced capabilities were touted as giving it the senior position in Vodafone’s buildout venture. The operator’s 5G RAN offerings will comprise radio hardware and smart multiband antennas, alongside basebands equipped with its RAN Compute boards, as recently deployed by SoftBank in Japan on a 5G SA project.

These boards are powered by Ericsson’s latest generation RAN Compute, as designed with Intel and which support AI-enhanced network functions such as intelligent automation, real-time traffic prediction, dynamic spectrum optimization, and AI-driven carrier aggregation.

Ericsson will also deploy 5G Core, infrastructure, and voice capabilities for VodafoneThree via the Ericsson dual-mode 5G Core solution, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure Solution.

Nokia and VodafoneThree

Nokia, meanwhile, will provide products from its AirScale RAN and Core Networks portfolio, including the internally developed ReefShark system-on-chip (SoC) platform, Habrok massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) radios of the sort also recently deployed by SoftBank, alongside multiband Pandion Remote Radio Heads, and baseband solutions.

Nokia will also offer up its MantaRay NM network management system to provide a consolidated network view for management and monitoring.

The company’s role was also positioned as integral in maintaining the current VodafoneThree core setup, which for the first few years will remain separate under a multi-operator core network (MOCN) arrangement, with RAN shared by the now unified firms while customer traffic is routed through each of their legacy cores.

Win for 5G SA

Overall, the partnership provides some wins for Ericsson and Nokia ahead of their latest quarterly results.

Ericsson’s latest financials revealed three percent growth year-on-year for the firm, while Nokia’s remained flat for the quarter.

With the $2.7 billion price tag, the VodafoneThree deal also presents a win for 5G SA.

A 5G SA core consists of the user plane, control plane, and shared data layer network functions, and allows telecom operators to deliver a more resilient core network. It also supports highly-touted 5G services like automation, orchestration, and multi-access edge computing (MEC).

5G SA also allows for network slicing, which has seen operators like Vodafone Germany and T-Mobile set up siloed virtual networks that act as independent, scalable networks able to handle the extra traffic from resource-heavy examples such as video streaming.