By Juan Pedro Tomás

Nokia has signed a two-year agreement with Taiwanese Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) to enhance its 5G network across Taiwan’s central and southern regions.

Under the terms of the deal, Nokia will provide equipment from its latest energy-efficient AirScale portfolio across 4,000 new sites to boost performance and capacity.

Nokia will supply the Asian telco with a wide range of solutions from its AirScale Single RAN equipment portfolio including macro base stations, small cells, 5G Massive MIMO antennas (64TRX and 32TRX), and passive RRH (8TRX and 4TRX) supporting different spectrum bands. These solutions will support CHT’s ongoing 5G coverage enhancement, network optimization, and ensure the best user experience for both outdoor and indoor enterprise use scenarios. The deal will also include network implementation and optimization services.

The European vendor also noted that the extended deal will support CHT’s competitive advantages to seize new business opportunities in the 5G era across several key industries including manufacturing, gaming, sports, and medicine with the use of services such as VR, AR, and 4K for live streaming.

President of the network technology group at Chunghwa Telecom, Alex Chien said: “Our commitment to delivering best-in-class 5G services to our customers is a priority for Chunghwa Telecom. This enhanced deal with our technology partner, Nokia, will help us to maintain our position as the number one mobile operator in Taiwan by delivering new and innovative services for our customers.”

President of mobile networks at Nokia, Tommi Uitto said: “We are excited to continue our long-standing partnership with Chunghwa Telecom. In particular, I am pleased that our energy-efficient AirScale portfolio will support its sustainability efforts by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. Taiwan’s mobile market is highly competitive with customer expectations for innovation and quality, so I am delighted Chunghwa is also prioritizing making its network and footprint greener.”

Chunghwa Telecom ended 2021 with over 12,000 5G stations across Taiwan, the company’s CEO, Harrison Kuo, previously said during a conference call with investors.

“In the fourth quarter, the mobile market in Taiwan remained steady as operators focused on 5G migration and development. By the end of 2021, our 5G penetration rate reached approximately 20 per cent,” Kuo said.

“As we continue to lead in network quality by accelerating 5G deployment at better locations, we remained provident on 5G customer migration and reaching our target maintaining our leading position in 2022. In the fourth quarter, 5G migration continued to drive ARPU uplift,” the executive added.

The Taiwanese telco had also selected Ericsson for the deployment of its 5G network.  Ericsson said that it will use the vendor’s Radio System base stations and Ericsson’s 5G core, including its 5G Evolved Packet Core. Ericsson’s 5G platform for CHT includes Ericsson Radio System base stations that will operate on 3.5 GHz for the mid-band and 28 GHz for the high band.