Ericsson has been selected as BT’s 5G RAN provider in the UK capitals London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff and other major cities.
The announcement builds on BT’s selection of Ericsson to provide the company’s cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core earlier this year, making Ericsson the end-to-end 5G partner for BT. Once the deployment is completed, Ericsson will manage around 50 percent of BT’s 5G traffic.
Philip Jansen, CEO, BT, says: “Our customers deserve the best network and we are delivering. We’re the UK leader in 5G and are excited to be working with Ericsson as a key partner to maintain that market leadership. Through this deal, we will continue to drive the best mobile experiences for our customers. The lightning-fast speeds of 5G will help them to develop their businesses, stream a growing choice of content over our network, and stay in touch with colleagues and friends all over the world.”
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson, says: “BT has a clear direction in how it wants to drive its 5G ambitions in the UK and we are delighted to be their partner in delivering that. Having already been selected to partner in 5G Core, we are pleased to strengthen the relationship further with this deal that will deliver high performance and secure 5G to their customers across the UK’s major cities. By deploying 5G in these key areas, we are yet again demonstrating our technology leadership in population-dense and high traffic locations.“
BT confirms Ericsson for 5G core
BT signed a deal to deploy Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core (Evolved Packet Core and 5G Core), a fully container-based, cloud native Mobile Packet Core for 4G, 5G Non-standalone and 5G Standalone services as a single fully integrated core. The solution, delivered on BT’s Network Cloud, will form a key component in BT’s move to a single converged IP network. It will incorporate network orchestration and automation, including continuous delivery and integration processes (CI/CD), and be integrated into BT’s existing customer experience management platforms using Ericsson Expert Analytics together with Ericsson’s built-in software probes. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Howard Watson, CTIO of BT, says: “Having evaluated different 5G Core vendors, we have selected Ericsson as the best option on the basis of both lab performance and future roadmap. We are looking forward to working together as we build out our converged 4G and 5G core network across the UK. An agile, cloud-native core infrastructure is at the heart of our ambition to enable the next generation of exciting 5G services for our customers and give the UK the world-class digital infrastructure it needs to win in the future global economy.”
Marielle Lindgren, Head of Ericsson UK and Ireland, says: “Ericsson and BT have a long history of working together and we are delighted to continue that relationship with this new dual-mode 5G Core deal. We, at Ericsson, have been in the UK for over a century and delivering the next generation of connectivity here is yet another proud part of our story”.
