With the UK blocking Huawei from its 5G infrastructure, Nokia becomes the next best option for UK’s BT. BBC reports that the Finnish telecoms giant has secured a deal to become BT’s largest equipment provider.
The UK announced in July that all vendors were to stop buying from Huawei; the deadline comes to into effect on 31st December 2020. The decision was taken on national security grounds influenced in no small way by the Trump administration’s war on Huawei for its alleged links and allegiance to the Chinese government.
Nokia will now provide base stations and antennae to allow BT’s customers make calls and sent messages via its radio access network.
Before this, Nokia was used in only a third of all BT’s 4G network with Huawei providing the rest. Now all Huawei equipment will be replaced with Nokia while older versions are upgraded to 5G.
BT is expected to purchase equipment from a second vendor to avoid depending solely on the Finnish company.
Mobile Techer 