Nokia and the Qatari telecommunications major Ooredoo Group have entered into a five-year strategic partnership to bring multiple technologies and services to customers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. As Nokia announced, the multi-national deal also includes introducing 5G services across these countries.
The deal builds upon Nokia’s global partnership with Ooredoo and Nokia will be working on expanding the former's existing network in the areas covered under the partnership. The company announced in the press release that deployment is already underway and is “expected to be completed by 2026 in all the countries”.
As per the announcement, Nokia is going to “deploy equipment from its latest AirScale RAN portfolio on sites across North Africa and Southeast Asia” and mentions that the deal also includes “digital deployment services supporting a faster time to market as well as technical support services”.
“Nokia will also provide its cloud-native Core software to give Ooredoo zero-touch automation capabilities that will drive greater scale and reliability. Supported by Nokia Cloud Packet Core, Voice Core, Registers, Policy Controller, Signaling and Cloud Platform, Ooredoo will be able to introduce network slicing to launch and grow new services spanning health, smart cities, banking, transportation, and public safety more rapidly,” the company said.
Nokia’s optical solutions and microwave transport is going to help facilitate the network expansion and help launch new services seamlessly.
“This renewed contract is testimony to our growing partnership with Nokia to modernise and expand our network by rolling out world-class 4G and 5G services across North Africa and Southeast Asia. Thanks to Nokia’s advanced technology, our customers will be able to experience faster speeds and enhanced response times as well as more bandwidth,” said Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Managing Director, Ooredoo Group.
“We are excited to continue delivering robust networks to Ooredoo’s customers. This new five-year deal will accelerate the benefits of Nokia’s technology – including 5G – for consumers in Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia and will enable businesses to digitalise and innovate with new services. The move to 5G will drive radical transformation across industries, communities and public services and we are proud to continue supporting Ooredoo Group on this journey,” said Pekka Lundmark, President and Chief Executive Officer at Nokia.
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