Making another bold commitment to its upcoming deployment of a national 5G network, T-Mobile announced Tuesday that it has entered a multi-year agreement worth $3.5 billion for Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson to supply 5G-related tech gear.
The deal comes after the third-largest U.S. mobile company entered into another $3.5 billion 5G gear deal with Nokia in July.
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Under the deal, Ericsson will provide T-Mobile with the latest 5G New Radio (NR) hardware and software compliant with 3GPP standards.
The contract also covers Ericsson’s digital services solutions, including dynamic orchestration, business support systems (BSS) and Ericsson Cloud Core.
“We have recently decided to increase our investments in the US to be closer to our leading customers and better support them with their accelerated 5G deployments; thereby bringing 5G to life for consumers and enterprises across the country,” said Niklas Heuveldop, president and head of Ericsson North America, in a statement.
T-Mobile is currently pushing federal regulators to approve its $36 billion merger with No. 4 U.S. wireless carrier Sprint—a deal it says is crucial to its 5G plans.
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It's unclear as to how these vendor deals will be impacted should T-Mobile not get the federal government's blessing.
As for Ericsson, it was also named in another 5G vendor announcement, with No. 2 wireless company AT&T on Monday also tapping Nokia and Samsung for its 5G rollout. (No. 1 wireless operator Verizon had earlier named Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung as suppliers to its 5G effort.)
For its part, AT&T has expanded its list of cities involved with its initial 5G rollout to 19.
