The announcements from Nokia and Ericsson have come around the same time that they have bagged 5G gear deals from Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom operator. Jio has so far only worked with Samsung, a South Korean tech giant. To be able to deploy 5G at faster rates and with quality gear, Jio has opted to diversify its choice of vendors and has given Nokia and Ericsson multi-year deals. Until now, Airtel and Vodafone Idea were the prime customers for these European vendors in the Indian telecom sector. But with these announcements, Jio has finally been bagged by the two. Jio would serve as a high-profile client for Nokia and Ericsson. The telco is profitable with rich cash flows and can easily arrange funds via debt or equity to pay off the dues. Jio would be deploying the 5G SA (Standalone) network in India. Nokia and Ericsson have both worked with foreign vendors and can easily help Jio with its 5G SA deployments. After the exit of Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE, the European vendors have profited big in the Indian market. The government didn’t want the Chinese companies to be a part of the telecom networks in India anymore. Thus, since the 5G trials even began, the telcos have been avoiding partnering up with Chinese vendors. Nokia and Ericsson have garnered all the market share that Huawei and ZTE would have had in the 5G market of India. In addition, even fresh 4G orders can’t be given to Chinese companies. Even for that, Nokia and Ericsson are now the top choices for the Indian telcos. Moreover, the orders from Jio to Nokia and Ericsson is a proof that the indigenous stack developed by the telco isn’t ready yet. Jio had promised to go indigenous with 5G; it looks like that will not happen anytime soon. A major chunk of Jio’s 5G networks is to be deployed by Ericsson and Nokia.
