BT and EE customers are set to benefit from Ericsson 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) connectivity following the company’s selection as BT’s 5G RAN provider in the UK capitals London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff and other major cities.
This announcement marks a significant strengthening in the BT-Ericsson strategic partnership and builds on BT’s selection of Ericsson to provide the company’s next-generation cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core earlier this year, making Ericsson the end-to-end 5G partner for BT. Once the deployment is completed, Ericsson will manage around 50 percent of BT’s 5G traffic. The expanded partnership creates exciting opportunities for collaboration on the next generation of 5G products and services.
While delivering improved customer experience to BT’s mobile customers, Ericsson’s RAN platform technology also underlines BT’s long-standing commitment to sustainability, reducing the company’s energy consumption and optimizing costs. Philip Jansen, CEO at BT said that through this deal, they will continue to drive the best mobile experiences for our customers. The lightning-fast speeds of 5G will help them 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, President and CEO at Ericsson said, BT has a clear direction in how it wants to drive its 5G ambitions in the UK. Having already been selected to partner in 5G Core, they are pleased to strengthen the relationship further with this deal that will deliver high performance and secure 5G to their customers across the UK’s major cities. By deploying 5G in these key areas, they are yet again demonstrating their technology leadership in population-dense and high traffic locations. 5G plays a critical role in meeting the UK’s Digital ambitions, accelerating digitalization of the economy and stimulating next-generation wireless innovation for consumers and enterprise.
