BT Taps Ericsson as its 5G partner for London, major UK cities

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, BT, says: “Our customers deserve the best network and we are delivering. We’re the UK leader in 5G and are excited to be working with Ericsson as a key partner to maintain that market leadership. Through this deal, we 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, Ericsson, says: “BT has a clear direction in how it wants to drive its 5G ambitions in the UK and we are delighted to be their partner in delivering that. Having already been selected to partner in 5G Core, we 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, we are yet again demonstrating our technology leadership in population-dense and high traffic locations.“

He adds: “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. With leading 5G technology, a robust supply chain capability, and more than 120 years of local presence in the UK, we’re committed to rolling out a reliable and secure 5G network alongside BT.”

Ericsson’s 5G RAN deployment and 2G/4G network modernization will comprise products and solutions from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio. This includes Ericsson Spectrum Sharing, which will enable BT to dynamically share 4G and 5G traffic to enable smooth, fast, and cost-effective migration to 5G.

Ericsson’s cloud native dual-mode 5G Core network selection by BT will see products and services from Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core (Evolved Packet Core and 5G Core) being deployed.

Ericsson currently has 113 commercial 5G agreements and contracts with unique communications service providers globally, of which 64 are publicly announced 5G deals, including 65 live commercial 5G networks.