BT has selected Ericsson as its partner for 5G deployment in major UK cities including London, Edinburgh, Belfast, and Cardiff, managing around 50 percent of their total 5G traffic.
The new BT–Ericsson deal builds on BT’s selection of Ericsson for 5G Core earlier in the year. Once the deployment is completed, Ericsson will manage around 50 percent of BT’s 5G traffic.
“We’re the UK leader in 5G and are excited to be working with Ericsson as a key partner to maintain that market leadership,” BT CEO Philip Jansen said.
“The lightning-fast speeds of 5G will help [our customers] 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, the president and CEO of Ericsson, said the company was pleased to strength its relationship with BT, and deliver “high performance and secure 5G” across major cities.
“By deploying 5G in these key areas, we are yet again demonstrating our technology leadership in population-dense and high traffic locations,” he said.
The Trump administration, which fears Huawei equipment could be used by Beijing for spying, has put pressure on America’s European allies to exclude the Chinese firm from supplying key telecom equipment.
Nokia and Ericsson have been the main beneficiaries of the challenges facing Huawei. From Bell Canada and Telus Corp. in Canada to BT in Britain, the Nordic companies have been grabbing market share from the Chinese firm.
