Finnish telecoms company Nokia partners with MTN to expand 5G in South Africa

Finnish telecoms company has joined forces with South Africa’s MTN in a move to boost the expansion of 5G in South Africa.

Nokia announced the news on Monday and said it has been selected by MTN South Africa for the first time ever as one of its 5G radio access network equipment providers.

Mobile Telephone Networks, MTN, has selected Nokia as it expands next-generation wireless services across the country.

“Under the deal, Nokia will modernise the existing 2G, 3G, 4G radio network and expand MTN’s 5G radio network across 2 800 sites in the central and eastern part of the country,” Nokia said in a statement.

MTN South Africa is the second biggest carrier in the country and it snapped up airwaves worth R5.2 billion in a R14.4 billion spectrum auction in March last year per Moneyweb.

Meanwhile, BusinessTech Africa also reported that Nokia Oyj, a Finnish 5G equipment supplier, has updated its emblem to avoid being associated with mobile phones, a market it left over a decade ago.

The brand refresh, launched on Sunday, is accompanied by a series of new strategic pillars aimed at enabling quicker development as the globe progressively embraces fifth-generation mobile technology.

“In most people’s minds, we are still a successful mobile phone brand, but this is not what Nokia is about,” chief executive office Pekka Lundmark said in an interview ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday.

“We want to launch a new brand that is focusing very much on the networks and industrial digitalisation, which is a completely different thing from the legacy mobile phones.”