Elisa Picks Ericsson to Empower SA Network in Estonia

The Finland based communications service provider Elisa is one of the most successful companies in upgrading its customers from 4G to 5G, according to Ericsson’s ConsumerLab report that investigates the different stages of 5G maturity among global operators.

With Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core, Ericsson and Elisa established an end-to-end 5G Standalone connection in Finland already in 2020 – the first in the Nordics – a key milestone in Elisa’s and Ericsson’s joint partnership to accelerating Finland’s digital transformation.

It is now time for the people and businesses of Estonia to experience this improved connectivity. The roll-out of 5G SA in Estonia will start during spring 2023.

Toomas Polli, Head of Elisa's Technology Unit and the Member of Board shares Elisa’s vision for the Estonian market: “In June of 2022 Elisa launched the first new generation 5G network in Estonia and when our 5G coverage will reach more than 50 percent of the population by the end of 2022, it will be a logical next step to move on with the 5G standalone core solution to provide services with ultra-reliable low latency and the highest level of security to our customers during the next few years.“

Today’s announcement means that, across both Estonia and Finland, Elisa’s 5G Core supporting 5G Standalone is provided by Ericsson – a critical partnership in delivering connectivity services to users in both countries.

Jenny Lindqvist, Head of Northern and Central Europe, Ericsson says: ”Elisa has a tradition of being first in its markets to introduce new 5G offerings to its customers. We are happy to partner with Elisa in those ambitions, operating at the forefront of digitalization with Ericsson 5G Standalone connectivity, which will be a major catalyst in meeting digital transformation goals across society, enterprise and industry.”

Toomas Polli comments on the partnership with Ericsson: “Ericsson has long been an important strategic partner for Elisa and is one of the fastest growing groups in the field of 5G mobile core networks in the world, whose technological vision for the future mobile trends has always been to be the forerunner. Long-term collaboration between Ericsson and Elisa will focus on the migration of 5G standalone mobile technology to deliver the newest and most innovative solutions for residential and corporate segments to support the digitalization of society and industrial automation.

Transitioning to a 5G SA network not only evolves the existing network architecture, but it also upgrades it so transformative elements can be introduced that cater to new business opportunities or vertical needs. The performance improvement can be felt by users immediately – a 5G SA device can connect six times faster to a 5G SA network than a device operating in NSA mode. For Elisa Estonia this will involve an expansion of the existing core network solutions Ericsson already supplies to Elisa Estonia, and includes Ericsson Cloud Native Infrastructure solution as well as components of Ericsson’s cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core solution.

5G SA will power high-end, next-generation use cases for both enterprise and consumer customers of Elisa Estonia, supporting applications requiring the fastest connectivity, highest data rates and lowest latency demands, as well as network slicing capabilities.