China Unicom has chosen Nokia to support the buildout of its 5G SA Core network in China, marking an expansion of Nokia’s existing 4G working relationship with the Operator.
Nokia has been awarded an approximately 10% share of China Unicom’s 5G core network. The core network performs a variety of functions, including setting up connections, bandwidth management, scaling and securing the network, and, now with 5G, opening up the network to support new, software-enabled use cases such as network slicing.
The Nokia Cloud core products that China Unicom selected provide Unified Data Management, Session Management and User Plane functions, and are complemented by Data Refinery and NetAct, all deployed on Nokia’s CloudBand.
The deal also includes products from Nokia’s Cloud Packet Core portfolio, including the Nokia Cloud Mobile Gateway. The product provides the 5G standalone Session Management Function and User Plane Function, in addition to supporting the 4G Serving Gateway and the Packet Data Network Gateway in China Unicom’s network.
Markus Borhert, President of Nokia Greater China
Nokia is very proud to expand our working relationship with China Unicom beyond 4G. We are looking forward to close collaboration with China Unicom on novel business models and 5G service innovation to enable an open 5G ecosystem.
