Nokia has announced it has been selected by Chunghwa Telecom to expand the latter’s 5G network, in a deal which it said will support the Taiwanese operator’s objective of achieving 80% population coverage and boosting the proportion of its user base on 5G to more than 20%. In a press release regarding the matter, the vendor noted that the network expansion will leverage products from its AirScale portfolio to deliver enhanced connectivity for people and businesses in the southern and central areas of Taiwan. It is understood that the network expansion will focus on ‘high traffic areas, as well as locations with high business demand, including metropolitan cities, universities, subways, high speed rail stations, industrial parks and exhibition halls, and over 120 highly populated tourist hotspots’. According to Nokia, meanwhile, the infrastructure will be designed specifically to leverage its competitive 5G radio solutions to support enterprise use cases.
The deal is said to include the deployment of products from Nokia’s AirScale portfolio, including AirScale base stations and AirScale radio access products. These will reportedly include Massive MIMO radios, enabling Chunghwa Telecom to boost the capacity of the existing spectrum and increase throughput. In addition, Nokia will continue its long-term vendor partnership with Chunghwa Telecom with ongoing support for 5G coverage enhancement, enterprise entry and enhancement, network optimisation and Cloud RAN transformation.
Commenting, Dr Alex C C Chien, President of Mobile Business Group at Chunghwa Telecom, said: ‘Supporting our enterprise and individual customers through advanced 5G services is an important focus for Chunghwa Telecom. We are committed to retaining our position as the number one mobile operator in Taiwan by delivering new and innovative services for our customers. Nokia continues to be a trustworthy and hard-working partner for Chunghwa Telecom throughout our journey.’